Das Wandern
by Black Waltz 0
Summary: [WA3] JV. Jet Enduro is dying. Little by little, his body is beginning to shut down. This is the way that the Filgaia Sample comes to an end. Can he learn what is important to him before it is too late?
1. The Fall

Das Wandern

_(The Wandering)_

A Wild ARMs III Fanfiction By

Black Waltz 0

A/N: Usually I wouldn't write with such a tried pairing like Jet/Virginia, but I believe that every true WA3 author should at least attempt this pairing once. To be honest, I've been trying to write a J/V for a very long time. I just don't have the knack for it. But I did really like the concept for this fic and that spurred me onwards to attempting this. This fic is a birthday gift for a very special somebody (I was supposed to give you a J/V last year but I failed :P), you know who you are.

Enjoy the fic!

xxx

_Willst du immer weiter wandern?  
Sollst du mein auf ewig sein  
Kahr' zurück, kahr' zurück  
Zur Früling treu und lieb  
Kahr' zurück, kahr' zurück  
Das Gluck is immer da._

It began with a fall.

That is, to say, it all became noticeable when he took his first fall. His hands on the reins of his horse tensed suddenly, unbearably, turning his knuckles white. He heaved forwards, his face contorting into a mask of surprised agony and confusion. The affliction, the biting problem was inside, not out. The girl who was riding next to him did not notice a thing until she heard the strained gasp and feeble choke of his attempts to pull air back into his lungs, a revenge upon the first jab of the _something_ had forced breath out of his system. Finally his hands went lax, along with his body, and Jet slid straight off his horse with a pitiful whimpering sound.

He struck the dried earth _hard_. His shoulder took the brunt of the impact and saved his neck and head from injury just barely, though his left temple grazed the ground and tore slightly at the skin. He had not braced himself for this impact and landed like a discarded rag doll, rolling once and coming to a stop effortlessly on his face. It was a miracle that he had not been trampled by the other horses around him, but Gallows had reared his black stallion up just in the nick of time. The horse whinnied once and staggered backwards on its hind legs, allowing room for the boy under Gallows' direction. He was off his horse a moment later, wondering what was wrong.

Yet it was feminine hands that touched him first, turned him over onto his back and lifted him up off the floor. They were strong hands, purposeful hands, the hands of a leader. Virginia forced him to sit up and brushed dirt from the boy's brow, concerned. Sweat had beaded upon it and had attracted the dust. It was a relatively cool day, the decline of autumn, so why did Jet perspire so? His forehead burnt with sudden fever, a severe heat. Jet's eyes were open and staring, but vacant, like a dead man.

A dead man.

Virginia gently closed his eyes and pressed his body to her breast, she could feel his chest moving against hers, so he wasn't dead yet. Good. Looking up, she barked an order at the man in a coat by her side, forcefully causing him to dash back to his horse and procure a blanket and some water. If the water wouldn't rouse him, then they would swaddle him up nice and tightly and deliver him to the nearest doctor or medicine man. If you didn't work fast in the face of danger, especially as a transient drifter, more often than not an unexpected turn for the worse would lead into death. Virginia had beaten that information into her own consciousness through experience and suffering, just like all her friends had. The trick was to never be surprised.

As an outlaw, Virginia had learnt this lesson well. In some ways this had made Virginia far stronger, in others it had caused her to lose a small part of herself to the past. It didn't bother her that much anymore, it was a sign of development and change, a sign that she was embracing the harsh world and the new sense of self that she had implanted with it. But this was old information, existing barely a tenth of a second in her mind. Jet was breathing, but it was not a strong breath, the breath of a healthy person. Jet breathed like a person afflicted with emphysema.

Her gaze shifted to Gallows, standing awkwardly before her. "Baskar Colony." She hissed. "Now."

xxx

It was customary in times of uncertainty like this for the one in turmoil to have bad dreams, seeing fragments of various nightmares in a vision of terror and fear. But Jet dreamed of nothingness for a very long time, an ungodly long time, both within his sleep and without. It had begun with a vacancy that had started when he lay within Virginia's dust-stained arms, which had slowly slipped into unconsciousness, and then to proper sleep. Sleep was good, it was the retreat of the weary soul. Unaware that he was doing so, Jet reveled in the blissful sleep of the living.

He slept for seven days in the flaxen beds of the Baskar Colony, ignorant of the three friends who watched over him in worry.

One day he opened his eyes. They felt sore and encrusted with dried sleep. His vision blurry, all he could see was stone tiles and thatch upon the ceiling, draped in moving shadows from the firelight downstairs. Jet sat up in bed and wiped at his eyes with the back of his hands, feeling a stiffness in his body that was not painful, just the result of remaining in one place for such a long time. His muscles felt asleep, sort of numb with an odd tingle along the edges, if that was the right way for him to describe it.

He looked at his hand. It did not shake, it held there as solid as a rock. Thank God, it was his gun arm and he could not afford for it to quaver so. He curled his index finger inwards and then out, satisfied. His trigger finger was safe.

"Generally I'm not really sure what could have caused something like this. It's an abnormality that does not present itself in nature. Of course, we are aware that he was not entirely brought into existence from natural means, but this still could not mean that… I mean, the facts are here, straight and simple, but it is difficult for me to accept them. His symptoms and his status as polar opposites, yet they choose to co-exist together harmoniously. It is not right."

Jet listened towards the direction of the scholarly voice. There was no doubt that it was Clive's. It was as it usually was, cool and collected, but there was a hint of confusion behind Clive's voice, blocking out something even smaller and more nebulous. Fear. Jet remembered falling off his horse, but before that, he had remembered an intense pressure clamping his lungs closed and compressed, whilst a red hot poker had thrust its way through his heart.

"He is scarcely eleven years old, Virginia, and yet these… these _problems_ that Shane tells me that he has is something that would affect an older person, a _far_ older person, somebody decades older than you or Gallows or myself!"

"I was thinking about that." Gallows' voice. "It's wrong for me to say that, and I know Ginny is going to yell at me for it, but why are we looking at him medically as if he were a human being like us? Because he _isn't_, you know? He's not one of us."

_"Gallows!"_

The boy could almost picture Gallows grimacing. "Just like I said, eh?" He heard Virginia huff. "I'm not trying to be mean or racist or anything, that's not me. What I'm trying to say is that Jet's different to us. He was made to be different to us and that's that. He's built like a Sample, he's a 'Sample', as in, the species Sample. What he has might be something human medicine can't treat."

Clive's bitter humorless voice. "You are saying we should take him to a _vet_, Gallows?"

"N-not at all! C'mon Clive, you of all people should get what I'm trying to say. Jet's sick, but he hasn't got a virus, or a disease. Shane couldn't find anything wrong with him, but…"

Jet slipped out of bed when he heard Shane's lighter, more melodious voice. He took care to be quiet. His legs felt like leaden weights, but he could stand. He could still walk, too. He held a hand to the side of the wall anyway, for extra balance. It certainly _did_ feel like he hadn't moved about for days and days. Just what day was it anyway? Monday? Saturday? How long had he been out of the loop of things?

Shane spoke in a hushed whisper. "He had a mild heart attack."

The steps seemed harder to go down than he remembered them. He felt like he was being pulled forwards by gravity, in fact, he had to lean back a little to keep himself stable. There was almost a little bit of a shuffle to his step.

He felt rather than heard Virginia's lead-laden inquiry. "…Just how long is a Sample supposed to live for, anyway?"

A deadly silence.

Jet staggered into view. They looked towards him, almost expecting his entrance like it was cued in a stage drama. He was leaning against the wall, weak but still there, still Jet. His eyes had the hardness of Jet within them. The heart attack had not taken that away. Slowly he tilted his head towards the ground wretchedly. "…The Council royally fucked this up, didn't they?" He said, then sighed. He had never heard his voice sound so empty before, so hollow.

Virginia moved forwards towards him, in the act of extending a hand out to him. She wanted to tell him not to think about that, to go back to bed, he was weak and needed to rest, that he shouldn't worry himself any more than he needed to. She paused, thinking hard. Jet was the victim, he had a right to know what had transpired in the seven days of his silent coma, on what they had discovered.

But, no. Later. Later, when he was healthier. Later, when _she_ was calmer. Tomorrow, in the morning. She was trying to hide it, but this conversation they were having was tearing her apart inside. And now Jet was awake. He looked like crap, but he was still awake and alive. She wanted to leap for joy at that fact, but the situation was just too morbid to allow her to consider it. She kept her feelings inside, for now.

She touched his shoulder. Jet looked at it like it had come from an alien spacecraft or something. Her face was kind, but it was a sad brand of kindness indeed. Jet had heard a large tidbit of what was going on in this evening, but it was not everything, and he was not in the right frame of mind to understand it all. His head felt all swimmy and his vision was shrouded in fog. "Jet, go back to bed. I'll guide you there, okay?"

He took her hand from his shoulder and held onto it firmly, half-believing that it might slip away otherwise. Her hand felt nice and warm, very soft. Jet felt the eyes of the others on him; he was the centerpiece of the room. "I… don't look at me like that…" He said with a hint of menace in his tone. They were making him feel like a botched science experiment where he stood.

_No, don't think about things in that way. They are your friends, not slack-jawed gawkers. Think about something else._

He couldn't.

_Think about **her**. She's holding your hand, isn't she? In front of the others? She hasn't done that for awhile, has she?_

He felt that he could manage that.

Virginia was frowning as she led Jet back to his bed. He seemed to have had trouble getting up those steps again. Maybe what Gallows and Shane was thinking was true.

Maybe Jet really _was_ going to die.


	2. The Lobster Quadrille

(A/N: Well, the little rhyme in this chapter was written a long time ago by Lewis Carroll, featured in his book 'Through the Looking Glass'. It belongs to him, and I'm merely borrowing it for this fic. Thankee!)

_Will you walk a little faster said a whiting to a snail…_

Jet was in bed, staring up at the ceiling, and for some inane reason he had a nonsensical rhyme careening around throughout his head. It was the last thing in the world that he needed, but it did the job of blocking out the other thoughts in his head, the confused ones, and he dared say, the frightened ones.

_There's a porpoise close behind me and he's treading on my tail…_

_(-i had…a heart attack…-)_

But it was there, nonetheless, playing second fiddle to Jet's stupid rhyme. The boy frowned and rolled over onto his side, trying to fall asleep again. He had slept for almost an entire week, so he thought it would be truly impossible to get to sleep again, but his body was immensely tired and unusually frail, and he felt sleepy already. It was a frightening thought to consider. No, don't think about it!

_See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance…_

_They are waiting on the shingle won't you come and join the dance?_

_(-gallows and clive they were talking about how i was gonna die-)_

_Will you won't you will you won't you join the dance?_

Jet clenched his gun wielding hand. It felt like he had been lying there forever. "I'm going fucking insane." He said, wanting nothing more than to get out of there. Where had he heard that rhyme from anyway? Somewhere along his drifter travels? A memory from the original Jet Enduro? Had Malik Benedict sung it to him sweetly whilst he slowly developed in his Filgaia Sample cocoon? God, now _that_ was a terrifying thought.

He slipped out of bed. It felt too hot and stuffy inside the Baskar residence, the air was almost constricting. He wanted to be outdoors again, in the cool and open night outside. It seemed like an eternity since Jet had last felt the touch of wind against his face. He would be able to think better once his temperature had gone down somewhat.

His socked feet touched the floor. Jet didn't bother to put on his shoes because he did not see them anywhere at first glance, and the idea only half occurred to him in the first place. The silver-haired android felt stronger than the last time he had risen from this bed, more sure of himself while he was alone. Nobody else appeared to be inside the house, it was just him. Yawning, Jet stretched and ran a hand through his messy hair, slightly flattened from his lying down. He walked down the steps easily and with no problems, pushing the painted Baskar door open and enjoying the welcoming rush of night air that assaulted his eager senses. It was late in the evening, nearly early morning, but the breeze felt _so_ good, not too warm and not too cold. Perfect.

Feeling a chill run through him and causing the fine hairs on his arms and the back of his neck to rise, Jet walked through the damp dew-covered grass, mindful that he was getting his socks wet but honestly not caring. He could already feel the hot burning flush inside his body diminishing in the cool air of night. Cicadas were muttering their constant 'reek-reek' under bushes and the dark shadows of trees around him, competing against the crickets in a well-matched battle of the insect bands. Jet folded his arms to keep his biceps from being nibbled on by passing mosquitoes.

"Will you walk a little faster…" He mumbled to himself, stepping towards the three tall spears dug firmly into the ground. Had anyone ever succeeded in pulling them up from out of the earth? He had to walk faster, he could feel that something was following him in his own shadow, distant now, but still on the trail. Tracking him. Looking over his shoulder for that shadowed intruder, he continued, wrapping a hand around one of the spears. "There's a porpoise on my tail…"

He _couldn't_ be that weak. Jet tensed his muscles and heaved upwards, trying to slide the long pole up and out of the ground. The soil was not loose, but it was certainly dampened, malleable to his needs. He could have used both hands to make the job easier, but this was a matter of personal pride for him. He had fallen, slipped into the dark and had woken up weak and fragile. It _had_ to be no more than a passing dream. Because if it wasn't, then he was wandering, wandering in the dark.

Sweat made his hand slippery. It slid upwards a little and Jet totally lost his grip. The spear had not yielded an inch, either. "Damn it!" Cursing, he let go and kicked at it, frustrated at himself for failing. For all he knew not even a muscle-bound strongman could have removed those poles, but that was beside the point. It was how he _felt_ that was the most important part, and his… his _heart attack_ had left him as weak and as frail as a kitten.

"Jet?"

He flinched towards the owner of that voice, guilty at being caught in a childishly tantrum-like state. Virginia was sitting down a short distance away, on the edge of the large flat stone that marked the very center of the Baskar Colony. She had not changed into her pajamas yet, she was still fully decked out in her drifter regalia. The only real difference between her and the Virginia of the daylight hours was that her hair was loose and not bound in a plait, half tamed, for she was brushing the tangles out of it when she had noticed him.

"Virginia," Jet said harshly, looking at the spears in anger, "What the hell is wrong with me?"

She was looking at him in perplexity. He was getting to the point rather quickly for somebody who was still recovering. "It's cold out here." Virginia replied, ignoring Jet's question. "You should be inside, where it's warmer. You'll get sick." Standing up, she moved over to him and touched his arm. Automatically he moved away from her, glancing at her as if she made no sense.

"No." He intoned grimly. "It's inside that makes me feel sick. That place is empty, I won't get any answers there. 'Feels like I'm being avoided. It's not right just leaving me in the dark. I want to know what happened. I remember something hurting badly, and then falling. After that there was nothing but darkness." Jet caught Virginia's concerned expression and softened a little. "Okay, maybe you're right. It _is_ a little cold out, but I need it to wake up properly. If you tell me what's going on, I'll go back inside."

"We don't like keeping things from you, Jet. You must know that." Virginia said quietly, gently taking his hand and leading him towards the stone seats. She sat down at the edge again and patted the rock as an invitation for Jet to do the same. He threw himself down as well and stared at her, expecting answers. He looked grumpy, but _respectfully_ grumpy, waiting for Virginia to speak. She looked up at the stars. The sky was covered with clouds and not one could be seen. It made her feel terrible, somehow. In situations like this, it was always implied that the stars would be there to comfort them. What a load of crap.

"I heard you all talking about me. You were saying things about symptoms, and my 'status', and how long I live for and stuff. I'm confused, Virginia. Shane said I had a heart attack, but that's the kind of thing that happens to old men and women, not me. I'm not even twelve years old yet! But my heart, it felt like it was trying to stop."

"I don't know what to say." Virginia confessed to him, looking at her clasped hands. "If I had an answer for you I'd say it. You should know that I wouldn't keep things from you. It must have been something to do with the Prophets, I'm sure of it." She continued to brush her hair again, slowly, like a physical motion to accompany her thoughts. "Clive had a theory, but it's not a good one. No, it's a terrible one. I think it brought pain to him for even saying it out loud."

"What's that?" Jet asked, knowing that curiosity killed the cat, but had to press onwards anyway.

"Well, Jet, you're a copy of another person, the Jet Enduro from ten years ago, right? That's part of who you are as the Sample. Clive put forward the idea and said that between a copy and the original, there is the chance for a flaw to appear in the system of the copy that renders it inferior. He said that once, a long time ago he read a book on technology of the ancient Elws, where they could produce copies of an organism through genetic manipulation. That's probably how you were made, isn't it?"

"Most likely." The boy said, nodding his head slightly. "I reckon the Prophets never really invented any technology for themselves, they just stole knowledge from the demon archives and the other races of the past."

"Then Clive said something frightening, something I didn't want to believe." Virginia looked Jet hard in the eye. "Are you sure you want to hear?"

"At this point I've probably heard everything." Came the twisted reply.

"One of the Elw's first experiments was to produce a perfect genetic copy of a basic animal, Clive's book said that they used a sheep. The original sheep lived to its full life span without any problems, but the so called 'perfect' copy of the sheep, it lived for only a fraction of its intended life span, barely even a third of it! It didn't get sick, it just died of old age. Jet…"

But the boy was already beginning to understand. "And the Prophets only _copied_ the technology of the Elws, they never bothered to improve on it any more than they needed to. And I was only meant to be a sample, nothing definite that had to live for a very long time. I guess it makes sense, then."

Virginia looked hurt. "That's only a theory, it isn't the truth until we can prove that it is so. But, so far, that's what we believe what might be happening to you…"

Surprisingly, Jet laughed. "Ah, so _that's_ what Clive meant with my 'symptoms' and my 'status' being so different. I'm the only eleven year old old man in the _whole_ of Filgaia! And I'm going to die!"

"You're going to accept that so easily?" The drifter leader was surprised, she had not even begun to accept information like that as truth, even if it had been spoken out loud by Clive. Jet leant back, enjoying the smell of the outdoors. It smelt of pine needles and wet wood, of an impending rainfall. That was good, Jet hadn't seen or felt rain for a very long time. As an afterthought, he placed his right hand over Virginia's. Usually he wore a thick and cumbersome hand guard to protect him like a shield in combat, but his hands were bare now, he felt, as well as he looked, like a complete civilian, somebody who had not drifted or wandered a day in their life.

"No." Jet answered solemnly. "I don't accept it. It's all a load of bullshit to me. I'm still young, I have a lot of living left to do on Filgaia, and like you say, I have to catch up with everybody else in the memory department. You said you would help me with that, you're not backing out of it, are you?"

Shaking her head resolutely Virginia leaned towards him, a little ticked-off at his accusation. "Of course not! You know I wouldn't do that to you. It's just… this has me scared, Jet. What happened to you, I've never seen it happen to anybody before, not like that. If you're sick, or if you're dying, it's going to hurt me as well, you know…"

"I'm not one of Clive's ancient cloning sheep, Virginia. Look, do you see any wool on me? Just check, I might have missed something." Virginia sighed out a relieved laugh and pushed him away, admiring Jet's ability to smile and to make her laugh at a time like this. Would the Jet Enduro from a year ago have even tried to _attempt_ something like that? She thought not.

"You look human to me." She said, and then bit her tongue, abashed. "Oops, sorry."

"Yeah." Jet nodded, agreeing with her. "I look human. I'm human, aren't I? Yes. It was hot that day, and you know me, I'm kind of pale and the sun just burns through me. I think I might have fainted from heat exhaustion, it's not uncommon for drifters to do that."

Virginia was still unconvinced, but played along because she didn't want her load of worry to bleed into Jet, who was still not quite recovered from whatever it was that had struck him. She felt bad handling him with extra care, like he was made of glass, but she cared about him too damn much to risk him breaking under the pressure. "Well," She intoned, "Let's wait and see what happens."

"Trust me."

"Yes… you're right. I'll trust you."

It was Jet who stood up first, offering his hand to her. It was only a small, subtle motion, but it spoke of Jet's desire to be strong again, to be in control, and he wanted to show to Virginia that the control and strength he had possessed whilst they had travelled across the planet was still there and inside him. It was ready to make him back into the Jet Enduro she was familiar with once more. The Jet Enduro that she loved.

She took his hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet. Jet gritted his teeth and bit down on something inside of him when the act caused a dart of pain to shoot through his arm and nestle fiercely in his chest, coiling around his heart and causing it to flutter, for just the briefest moment. He refused to believe it when the impulse reached his mind and forced himself to forget about it immediately, though Virginia caught for short glimpse a phantom of pain moving behind Jet's violet eyes. It never happened.

_Jet, you little whiting, you can ignore the porpoise, but he'll always be on your tail…_

That crazy song again.

"C'mon." He said, a little breathless. He wanted to put this day behind him. "Let's go to bed."


	3. Grounded Wings

(A/N: Not much J/V in this chapter, sorry! But don't worry, the plot is beginning to build into something _big_! I hope you'll all stick around for the show!)

Another week passed without any serious problems, but this time Jet was conscious and able to experience it. For that week Jet lived the life of a normal human being, tied down to the land that he lived in. For a short amount of time, his drifter wings were closed.

Slowly and tremulously his strength began to creep back. It came back in small ways that only Jet himself was able to see. For example, he could hold his Airget-Lamh with one arm without it beginning to shake after a moment, he could walk for short distances without becoming tired, and five days after he had woken up in Baskar, he had helped Shane and Gallows cut wood for the approaching winter. They were small victories at the most, but they meant a lot to him and his self image. The Jet inside him had not died yet.

That strange painful feeling he had felt that evening with Virginia had not resurfaced again.

To be honest, he was grateful to the Carradine family for letting him stay with them at such a short notice. All he was doing was wasting their resources just being there, but for some reason they did not seem to complain. It felt odd to Jet to come to the conclusion that they truly must have wanted him to stay. He guessed that Gallows' family wasn't so bad after all. Jet spent a lot of time with Virginia too, mostly ARM practice and things like that, he was delighted to know that his aim, while it had become a little shaky, was nowhere near as bad as he thought it would be. He could live with a little shakiness if it meant that he was still alive.

Before he knew it, another week had passed, and then another. Jet found himself slipping into a routine that shaped the entirety of his day, it was becoming more and more familiar for him to practice. He would wake up in the mornings and help Shane to fetch water from the well, then he would take a walk and take pot shots at cans lined along a neighbour's fence, or at any kind of vermin-like creature he found along the way. He usually came back in time for himself and Gallows to cut some wood to keep the pyre going in the evening, though Jet used that time to go on casual though mostly fruitless hunting trips with Clive. The rest of the time he spent with Virginia, doing various things.

It occurred to him at one point that this long string of tasks for him to do were a good way for him to earn his keep while he recovered in the colony of Baskar, but another smaller and more cynical voice inside his head whispered to him that it was a trap that fate had set up for him, to steal his drifter wings away for good, for forever. When was the last time he had seen the skyline of another distant city? When was the last time he had eaten wild squirrel in the middle of the wilderness over a hasty fire of knotted dried-out driftwood? When was the last time he had killed a monster in the sheer thrill-filled moment of consummated combat?

Too long, too long ago.

He had been splitting wood with Gallows when this thought crossed his mind. Jet had been working with the slow steady performance of an automaton, slicing the wood with one downward swing of the axe and digging it out of the cutting block again, waiting a good five seconds for Gallows to replace the wood before he started again. His thoughts had turned inwards slowly through his chore and Jet hadn't noticed when Gallows had stopped to say something to him and fouled up the procedure they were working on. To be more precise, Jet had swung the axe down while Gallows' hand had been resting on the cutting block, nearly slicing off one of the young Baskar's fingers. One more inch or so and he definitely would have drawn another person's blood.

"Yeowee!" Gallows cried, ripping his hand away and cradling it against his body in shock. "Pay more attention when you're cutting things, you almost took off one of my fingers! I _need_ that one to curse people!"

"Huh? Oh, sorry Gallows. I guess I was thinking too hard about something." Said Jet in apology, prising the small hatchet out of the chopping block. He placed the head of it on the ground and leant on it like it was a walking stick. "Besides, you're fine."

"Yeah, but that could've turned real ugly real fast." The larger man pressed, letting go of his shock and shaking out his hand, like it would relive the imaginary tension in it. "So what's so important to think about that you're willing to risk my limbs over?" Daringly he added, "Thinking about Virginia?"

"Maybe." Jet replied coyly, looking at him square in the eye for a moment before diverting his gaze to the rising sun. It would reach its peak in the sky very soon. The silver-haired boy was glad for the fact that he and Gallows were doing this chore under the eaves of a large and shady tree. The leaves cast odd formations of light and shadow over his friend's face. "Actually, I've been thinking about other things."

"Such as?" Gallows asked, placing a new cylinder of wood upright on the chopping block.

"It's been about a month since I first fainted for some strange reason or another." He sliced, the wood fell into two chunks and Gallows replaced it. "A month since I fell from the sky and was cut outta the drifting scheme of things." Swing. Cut. Replace. "And I'm beginning to get the feeling that if I don't pick up where I left off soon…" He discovered that the sound of the splintering wood was becoming mildly pleasant to his ears. "I might not find it that easy to begin drifting again. I guess it's beginning to freak me out, but not nearly as much as I thought it would be. That freaks me out even more, if that makes any sense to you."

Gallows had stopped what he was doing, so Jet had no choice to pause as well. The Baskar priest studied his friend well. Jet was wearing blue jeans, a black shirt and not much else because it was such a hot and sweaty day. The boy was actually beginning to understand Gallows' usual lack of a shirt, because it could get so damned _hot_ up there in Baskar, but Jet had not gone that far himself just yet. Gallows' mouth curved into a small smile when he noticed that Jet was wearing a wooden Baskar bracelet on his left wrist, it looked like it had been hand carved carefully and it was decorated with dark red beads and two small hawk feathers on the sides. Had Jet begun to embrace the Baskar culture so quickly? Wow.

"Where'd you get that?" He asked, pointing to the bracelet in question.

Jet looked blank, but then followed the invisible line from the end of Gallows' finger to the bracelet he was wearing. His mind made a connection. Jet raised his arm and looked at the bracelet in contemplation. "This thing? One of the kids from the colony said that they carved it for me, they said that the little pictograms on the wood are supposed to make me heal better and feel stronger. I don't know if it's really working or not, but I didn't expect a kid to give me something out of the blue." He was going to say that he thought the people of Baskar were being unnaturally nice to him, but he unconsciously bit his tongue. Jet didn't feel right about badmouthing or doubting the people who were trying to help him.

Even if Jet didn't believe in the healing powers of the ornament, Gallows felt hope in the fact that Jet was wearing it out of appreciation for the child's gift. He was still experiencing and learning things about people and the world, even now.

"Can I see that?" Gallows asked, standing up and beckoning to Jet. Obligingly the boy placed his hand in Gallows' palm, the beads rattling slightly against the dark rich wood. The Baskar inspected the pictogram carvings carefully, and as he went further into understanding it, he had to press his lips together to keep himself from laughing out loud. The bracelet did indeed bear a healing charm upon it and a prayer for him to recover… but it also said that Jet had cooties as well.

Kids these days.

Gallows let go and turned around, suppressing a snort of laughter. "I think you're being protected from evil real well, Jet." He managed to giggle out. Yeah, that was right, protected by the Guardian of Cooties!

"You laughing at me?" Jet demanded, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

"Nope!" Gallows cried, crouching down again and placing some more wood on the chopping block. "C'mon, let's get back to finishing this. Did I mention that you're making my life real easy for me since you turned up and started doin' half my chores?"

"You'd better shut up about it or I'll start to charge you." Jet replied arrogantly, swinging his axe particularly hard down upon the wood. It was hewn cleanly in two but the extra force caused them to fly apart in opposite directions. Gallows was not expecting this and was squatting directly in the piece of wood's trajectory. He was smacked in the face and uttered a startled squawk before keeling over and falling down onto the grass, twitching and attempting to curse.

"Uh…" Jet mumbled. "Sorry again."

xxx

It was the middle of the night.

A girl was waiting at the boundaries of Baskar Colony for a caravan that would arrive at the crack of dawn, one that would be carrying imports from other towns along the Midland area. This was not what interested her, in truth she was waiting anxiously in the muggy twilight for the one who was driving it, her large friendly hulk of a father. The girl was still sleepy but utterly delighted, as she had not seen her father for almost an entire season, and he was the last little bit of family that she had left in the world.

She huddled into herself and her dark woven shawl, though it was a sultry morning, she was still mindful of the mosquitoes and other nasty bugs that were zooming about and through the drab air. She just _hated_ those awful things.

From the distance she could hear a low humming in the air, almost becoming a dull roar. She discounted it as the blood rushing through her ears due to her excitement.

So, because of ignoring this sound, she was not prepared at all when she was taken.

The only thing that alerted the world of her departure was the long, loud, outlandish scream of fright that cut through everything around her, like a hot knife through melting butter.

And the silence that came after was frightening, deafening.

xxx

Jet pushed his way through the steadily thickening crowd of milling, upset Baskars. Virginia, Gallows and Clive were following close behind him in a single file. Halle was standing upon the large flat council stone with her walking stick supporting her aged body, Shane standing quietly by her side. The throng of people was bubbling with frightened exclamations and accusations of each other, but Halle and Shane were the only ones who were silent. The Maxwell Gang had succeeded in pushing their way to the head of the crowd, and when this occurred, the old grizzled elder of the colony sucked morning air into her lungs and screeched;

"QUIET!"

The area around the council stone became as noiseless as the dead. You could have almost heard a pin drop if you tried. Halle coughed. "That's better." She said, in a much lower tone of voice. "Now let's talk about this one at a time. Leo, you can go first."

A veritable giant of a man ascended to the council stone. He was broad-chested and tanned to bronze by the bright Filgaian sun. His hair was an amazingly thick bramble of golden mane. He did _indeed_ look very much like a lion, in appearance, if not in spirit. He appeared to be distraught and scared, yet moderately furious. "I come back from a season of hard thankless work, only to find that my one and only daughter has been kidnapped by a monster, a _fiend!_ Who could have allowed this to happen! Speak!"

A chorus of voices rose up against Halle's wishes.

"A demon, it must have been a demon!"

"The weaver's son has had his eyes on her for quite a while! It could have been him!"

"The loss of a maiden means another drought!"

"The Guardians are displeased with us!"

"ONE AT A TIME!" Halle crowed again, creating a blissful silence once more. The folk who had risen their voices looked down at the ground in shame. Unexpectedly the old woman smiled sunnily, towards Clive who had risen his hand up into the air like a young schoolboy who knew the answer to a teacher's complicated question. "Go ahead, dear."

Jet found Halle's fancy towards Clive particularly disturbing. Clive didn't seem to notice, though, and if he did, he hid it well. The green-haired sniper calmly ascended to the council stone himself and spread his hands a little, in the beginning of a crudely devised speech. "I am sorry," He began, "I am not a true member of this society, but I feel it is in my responsibility to speak like this. I am a drifter and the eradication of large monsters is my specialty, as you can see from my ARM here." His shrugged his right shoulder a bit, drawing attention to the large ARM slung over it. "Let's be rational here. Mr… uh, Mr. Leo, how did you come to know about the disappearance of you daughter?"

"I saw it fly right above my head, right above my own caravan! It had her in its hairy arms, flying off towards the mountains. She was screaming, my little girl was screaming! It's going to take her back to its lair and _eat her!_"

"Winged monsters usually have their dominions in large cave systems." Clive said knowingly. "Are there any caves around here in Baskar?"

Virginia spoke up. "Um, I'm not from around here either, but I remember seeing big caves up and around the Zenom Mountains, near the Fallen Sanctuary. Does that sound right to you all?" She received a sea of murmurs and agreeing nods.

"And that is south, in the direction that the monster took this girl. The pieces seem to fit." Clive assessed, folding his arms. He placed the next query for Virginia to decide. Looking down at her, he spoke in a quieter voice that was meant only for the Maxwell Gang. "So, what are we to do now? Leader?"

The drifter leader pulled herself out of the crowd. She did not climb up the council stone, but stood level with the mob of people standing in front of her. Gallows and Jet looked at her in expectation. "Time is the most important thing here." She announced, "And if nobody acts now and acts fast, then that little girl will wind up dead! I'm going to volunteer my team to go after the monster! Perhaps we can save her! Please, allow us to try."

Halle offered a crinkled smile. "We would be in debt to you." She rasped.

Virginia looked at the old woman resolutely. "We'll mobilize right away. Clive! Gallows! Come on!"

Clive hopped off the council stone, adjusting the strap of his rifle ARM. Gallows already had his Coyote ARM with him. Jet was still up in the front of the crowd, and as the three drifters pushed their way through, the big Baskar grasped at Jet's pale hand. "You're coming too, right?" He asked eagerly.

Jet was confused at himself for shrinking away and trying to back into the crowd of townspeople, behind another Baskar that was taller and broader than he. The only reason he failed at this was because Gallows had grabbed onto his arm. "But I…" He breathed. "I can't…"

Gallows looked bewildered. "What? Why not?" He asked, letting go.

_Because I'm not a drifter anymore, Gallows. I've pretty much signed myself away to this lifestyle and my ARM is too rusty to fight again. Because I've become a person that I would have hated a year or so ago, a cowardly citizen, a person too scared to fly. I might as well accept it, Gallows my friend, when a migratory bird crashes, sometimes it crashes for good._

The boy was going to say as much as he could of that thought that his pride would allow, but Virginia's voice spoke over his, cutting him out. She was deciding his fate without him having any say in the matter, and that, somehow, made Jet _mad_. "No. He's not coming. Jet is in no condition to fight." He could almost imagine her adding; _"And besides, he'll only slow **us** down."_

Jet felt like he was going to say something to her that he might regret later on, but that was when something caught his eye which caused the curse and accusation to die in his throat. He glanced towards the giant of a man named Leo, the father of the missing daughter. He was talking to Halle frantically, perhaps displeased with the poor-looking rescue party that had volunteered their help. He was gesturing wildly with his hands, a carved wooden bracelet rattling against other items of jewelry that he wore, feathers swaying in the wind. Although the pictograms and some parts of the design appeared different, it looked _just_ like the one he was wearing himself.

So the girl that had been kidnapped had been…

That did it.

The rest of the Maxwell Gang had left without him, slipped away whilst he had stared like a dumb oaf at the man upon the pedestal. "Damn you, Virginia." Jet swore, tearing his way through the crowd and towards the Carradine household, where his hand guard, his scarf, and his Airget-Lamh had been put away. "I'm not dead yet." He growled, feeling a demented sensation of righteousness flow through his body once more. It reminded him of the old days, the days of Jet the selfish bastard outlaw.

The boy bit his lip hard when he flung the cottage's door open, it felt like there were two of him now, Jet the mundane citizen, and Jet the outlaw. That was good, there was a version of himself there to man each wing, to help him fly.

Jet had fallen from the wasteland sky, and yes, he knew, there was a good chance that he was dying inside.

His wings had been broken, mangled and torn.

But even if they had not healed, regardless, he was going to fly.


	4. Pride Cometh

_Am I doing something stupid?_

Jet tugged down hard on his right hand arm guard. It still fit well, but of course it still fit, for Jet had not grown at all in the time that he had spent at Baskar. The perfect tightness of it was a reminder that he only had a short amount of time for him to get ready and go, or else the Maxwell Gang would get there and dispatch the monster before he had the chance to act. He could not think of himself as a member of that team anymore, not when Virginia had so gravely ordered him to stay behind. She could only command him if he was one of them, part of the so called _team_, so for now, Jet considered himself a rival of the Maxwell Gang, and if required, an enemy.

_I probably am, but it's not like I can do much else. This is what I am built for._

He flicked his red and white shredded scarf over his shoulder now and looked at himself in a small mirror leaning against the wall. He was all geared up and ready to go. Jet self consciously loaded up his weapon while standing in front of the mirror, emptying one of his spare bullet clips into the gun and making sure the weapon was prepared and secure. Jet was positive that he could still use the thing, even if he had ceased drifting, he had not for a day forgotten the correct way to hone his spirit into his ARM. He had not forgotten the feel of the Airget-Lamh within his hands.

_This is it._

_This is who I am._

Grabbing his item pack he bolted for the door, slamming it closed behind him. The door rattled on its hinges once more and creaked open again, but Jet was too far away to notice or go back to fix it. He was running towards the boundaries of the village, still hearing the searing shouts and arguments coming from the council area. Halle and Shane were trying to calm them down without much success. It seemed like a second team comprised of Baskar hunters was getting ready to head on out.

Even on horseback Jet could not have hoped to catch up with Virginia and the others, as they had undoubtedly summoned horses of their own and had left at a thundering gallop for the mountains beyond the Fallen Sanctuary. Jet's brown stallion could match the pace of the other horses, but he doubted that he could manage to surpass them. Lombardia seemed like a good second option to the silver-haired android, she could easily fly him there on her vast metal wings, but there was a chance the others might notice him, soaring overhead.

But he still had his last resort. Slowing down, Jet stepped out into the wilderness for the first time in a long, long month, breathing heavily and trying to catch his breath. It was strange, usually he would not have been winded at all. Jet looked at the wooden bracelet he was wearing one more time, then dug into his inventory pack for an item he knew that he owned, something that himself and the other three had depended on in the past.

The teleport orb could bring him there in the twinkle of an eye. Why had the others not taken it with them? Virginia must have been too much in a rush, Jet considered, she had forgotten all about it. Well, he had not. The orb could only bring him as far as the Fallen Sanctuary, Jet knew, so after that he would have to hoof it on foot or rely on his horse. The boy was certain that he would be able to bypass the Maxwell Gang this way, hell, he would have enough spare time to beat up the monster and save the maiden, all before it was time for lunch.

His hands touched a smooth polished surface and he lifted the large red gem out of his inventory, marveling at how light it was, like it was a scarlet soap bubble made of air. If he pressed down too hard, would it pop? Unlikely, the orb felt like it was made of glass. The gem pulsed red along the outline of his fingers and hands, heating up.

It was time to fly.

"Fallen Sanctuary." Jet ordered decisively. "Take me there."

xxx

"It reminds me of the Den of Miasma." Clive muttered to his team leader, bringing up the rear of the hunting party. Virginia was ahead of him and in the middle, with Gallows bravely acting as the point. He had volunteered for that position himself. "But not quite as poisonous."

It had been an hour since they had left the boundaries of Baskar Colony. Now they were deep under the earth, creeping down into a grimed pungent tunnel and prepared for an attack, despite not even coming across a single random encounter since they had taken that first held their breath and dived in. Gallows was carrying a burning torch, made from a large stick of wood and bound with strips of rags that had used to be one of Virginia's old nightshirts. They had doused it in kerosene and lit it with the girl's tinder crest. It offered to them an ample amount of light to see by.

"It sure _smells_ like the Den of Miasma." Gallows agreed, feeling the desire to hold his nose. He refrained because he needed a hand free to reach for his gun if it was required.

"Clive…" Virginia began, turning towards her friend who had his back to the others, walking backwards to prevent upon them a back attack. He was relying on Virginia or Gallows to alert him if he was to trip over a rock or bump into a wall. Clive tilted his head a little towards her, indicating that he was listening. "You're used to slaying big monsters. How do we know when we are getting close to its hideout?"

"Usually all tunnels lead into the big chamber that is called the den. Some take longer to get there than others, but sometimes an intelligent monster will dig tunnels that go in huge circles, to confuse any aggressors that would follow it. The best way to select the quickest route to the den is to use your instincts, Virginia. That is my advice. It seldom fails."

"You mean we should play 'Eeny meeny miney mo?'" Gallows snorted, placing a hand upon the wall of the tunnel and grimacing when green mossy slime peeled off onto his hands. It stung his skin slightly upon the touch.

"Well, to put it crudely, yes." Clive sweatdropped, adjusting his glasses. "Do not worry. There are three of us and only one of the monster. Even if we are forced to split up, I have faith that we possess the power to destroy it."

Gallows wiped his hand on his pants, leaving a green stain. "We would've had four if Jet had come along with us…" He murmured, going around a bend in the tunnel. He sensed that Virginia had stopped following him, and his assumption was proven correct when Clive accidentally bumped into her, making a short surprised noise at being stopped in his tracks. Was something wrong?

Virginia looked annoyed. "What would you have me do, Gallows?" She demanded. "Would you want me to put him back into the front lines, back into danger when we aren't even sure if he has healed yet? Something, _anything_ could provoke him into a relapse of his…" She searched for a word. "His condition. If that were to happen, could you stand to have something like that on your conscience? I sure couldn't. Besides, did it _look_ like Jet wanted to go?"

Thinking back to the council earlier in the morning, Gallows recalled the expression on Jet's face when he had grabbed his arm and had asked the boy whether he was coming with them to the hunt. It had looked weird, almost like the boy had been mildly frightened. It wasn't the look of a drifter at all, it had been the look of a scared young boy. Jet had not said to Gallows a simple; _"I won't."_, like the decision for him to go or not go was something that he could decide by himself, but instead he had whispered to the man; _"I can't."_, as if the act was far beyond his ability to perform. Had he changed that much in so short a time?

Gallows raised his hands in a gesture of submission and defense. "I'm not blaming you, Ginny!" He replied adamantly. "I'm just… thinking out loud."

The drifter leader sighed, deflating. "I know, Gallows. I'm sorry." She looked waxen and diminished in the underground torchlight. "It just has me edgy at the moment, is all. You know about how I feel." The look in Gallows' eyes told her that they did, but they did not say anything. It was not something that words could articulate.

Clive turned around, facing towards the front. He placed one hand upon Virginia's shoulder and pointed far in front of her and past Gallows, into the dark. "I can feel a touch of breeze coming from down this tunnel. Yet it moves at different intervals, so I am guessing that an intersection may be up ahead." He stated, voicing his observations over the conversation of Virginia and Gallows. He was still mindful that they were functioning under a time limit and that if they dallied too long the little girl that they were trying to save might wind up dead. Clive was impatiently trying to drive his team along without seeming to come off as pushy to them. Jet was important to him as well, but it was not Jet's life that was in direct danger right now, it was the life of the child instead.

"Hold on, I've got some spare torches here." Answered Gallows, passing his torch to Virginia and searching through his item pack for more. He procured two unlit torches of similar design and handed one to Clive. Ceremoniously they tipped their last few drops of kerosene onto the cloth that both men had selected, Clive using a largish white handkerchief whilst Gallows had secretly settled for an old pair of his socks. It was okay, the chemical smell of the kerosene blocked out the scent of any other possible odors. They touched the two unlit torches to the one wreathed in flame reverently, waiting for the lively flicker of the fire to be shared around.

They continued onwards, relying on Clive's personal assumption. The kiss of wind touched all three faces and they sighed at the gentle caress, smelling the rich deep minerals of the ground around them, in the rock and in the dirt. Just as the green-haired drifter had predicted, the fairly large tunnel they had been walking through split off into six different directions, some leading deeper down into the earth, others crawling upwards and far into the darkness ahead. One of them tilted sharply to the right. So, what were they to do now? Should they split up and cover half of the tunnels available, or should they methodically check each tunnel together as a team?

Time was of the essence, and so they selected the former option.

It was hard for Virginia to split her forces up even further after what she had done to Jet, but she believed that she had no choice. They would reach the monster's den three times faster in this way. Clive and Gallows vanished into the two tunnels furthest apart from one another, while Virginia elected one of the middle tunnels, the one that led deeper down into the earth. She had picked that one from the persistent breeze that blew through it, indicating possibly clean fresh air, or, more sinisterly, a large flying monster's movement. Along with that, she had a deep haunting sensation that this was where she was _meant_ to go.

Eeny meeny miney mo?

Hey, why not?

Relying on her decision, she slipped inside.

xxx

A short amount of time had passed.

As Virginia was walking down the tunnel she had chosen, the torch smoldering in her hand, a foot from the shadows stuck itself out in front of her path and the girl walked into it, crying out briefly as she lost her balance and sailed straight down onto the floor, the torch hitting the ground and rolling out of her palm, resting on its side. Virginia uttered a low groan at meeting the ground so fast and so suddenly, mentally cursing the stalagmite or jutting piece of rock that had tripped her down.

She felt like she had skinned both of her knees. They burned as if she had drawn some of her own blood and the only reason she had not scraped both of her palms was because they were encased in smooth white gloves. The left side of her hip hurt slightly from where one of the holsters of her ARMs had dug into her flesh from the impact. It would probably leave a bruise.

Jet casually strode out of the shadow he had been standing in and obligingly picked the torch up from the floor, crouching down and looking at his rival squarely in the eye. Silver hair fell across his face and his brushed it away, tilting his head a little to see her better. "Sorry about that." He chuckled, not sorry in the least. "I didn't see you there. I guess I'll just take this torch now, shouldn't I?"

Virginia pushed herself up with her arms and looked up at the person who was talking to her. How odd, he seemed to be a lot taller from her particular vantage point. She had not even considered that he had been the one to trip her down, let alone what he was doing here in the first place. He was meant to be back in Baskar, recovering. She had made sure that it would be that way. "Jet…" She said softly, surprised. "How did you get here? How did you get in here without any light?"

"I walked a little faster. You didn't see me close behind you." Jet answered cryptically, for a moment remembering that weird seafood song he had been mulling over on the night he had awakened from his fall, three weeks ago. It touched upon him like a cold, familiar hand, then was swept away again. "As for the light, it was easy enough to get this far by using all my other senses, touch being the most important. But I'm planning on going deeper inside now, so I need your torch."

The girl leant back and sat down on her knees. She felt a little better at talking to Jet in this position, without him towering over her. Jet had not answered the first part of her question, but with the impishly condesending look in his eye as any guideline, she knew he wouldn't answer the question no matter how many times she badgered her. "Jet, please. You shouldn't be down here. You can't fight, you're too sick!"

Standing up, Jet regarded her with a look of exasperation mixed with disgust. Sourly he said; "Gee, well, that's news I ain't heard yet. You gotta realise that the one person who knows and understands that the most is _me_. Stop telling me stuff that I already know, it's annoying. And I can be wherever the hell I want to be, it's a free country." He sounded like a sulking teenager, but there was a force of conviction in his words which belied his age.

Virginia was now painfully aware that her torch, the item that she needed the most at this time was in the hands of the enemy. She had to get it back somehow, even if she had to bargain with him. But most prominently, she was worried for him in here. What if he had another attack whilst deep down, miles in the dark? Nobody would be there to save him then. Jet claimed to be aware of this, so why? Why was he so recklessly putting his life on the line right in front of her? Was he intentionally trying to cause he pain?

She became aware that she had spoken before she had even _thought_ about it. "If you die in the dark, Jet, what is that going to accomplish?"

He knew the answer but it was something that he couldn't say in words, mostly because it was confusing to him, but also because he would have to relinquish his pride and his sense of dignity to Virginia, who was one of the only people in the world who's opinion and perception meant the most to him. Of course he knew that he would accomplish nothing, but if he was fated to die down here, he would die respectfully as a drifter. As in life, so in death, as the saying was heard. He was afraid of becoming doomed to obscurity, if anything, he wanted to go out with a bang. Jet wanted to savour the taste of drifting while he still could, while it was still availiable to him.

And also, on a very deep and primal level in his flawed heart, Jet knew that this was to be his last flight.

He wanted to enjoy it.

Jet folded his arms carefully, mindful of not burning himself on the torch. "You worry too much." He stated in a bored tone of voice. "I am not going to die. Cut the crap already."

Leaping to her feet, Virginia had the almost unbearable urge to slap him across the face. Tears prickled her eyes, more of despair than of anger. Jet was so contrary, he lied whenever a weakness was about to be shown, and Virginia knew the difference between the truth and his farce. Gritting her teeth, she wished that the others were here as well, with her. Gallows and Clive might have been able to talk him out of this _idiocy_. "Don't you care about me at _all_?" She asked in a strained voice.

"No, not really." Jet said dully, staring blandly at the back of his palm. But then he make eye contact with her and she saw the confused, slightly frightened look in his eye, almost totally hidden by a layer of apathy. It said; _"Of course I do. I… I just can't say it out loud. Don't make me say it out loud."_

She was heartened by this, now becoming familiar to Jet's reflex-like act. He was trying to be a drifter so hard, _too_ hard, that he had gone overboard. Virginia felt that Jet was aware of this as well, but he couldn't stop himself, not when he had already begun. Jet had his pride, and he was determined to be buried with it intact.

"You bastard." She said at last, abhorring him for his pig-headedness.

"Yup, that's me."

Virginia was glaring at him with something akin to hatred in her eyes. Jet was endeared to this particular side of her, so full of passion and fiery rage. She looked so beautiful, especially when she was angry. Grinning twistedly, Jet leant forward and cupped one hand against the side of her face, feeling the warm anger-flushed skin. Virginia was perfectly capable of breaking his arm now, easily, if she wanted to. But she didn't.

_I'm sorry, Virginia. If you were me, you'd understand…_

Jet enjoyed pissing her off, and this would be the _piece de resistance_. The silver-haired drifter was mindful to keep his relative distance from her but tilted his head forward enough to press his lips against hers, a languid, sarcastic, but strangely loving kiss, one that advertised Jet's affection for her by withholding any sincere warmth. He knew that when Virginia was a drifter and played it tough, she liked it this way. They usually saved the lovey-dovey stuff for later, when a day was not a matter of life or death.

_As in life, so in death. Don't make me rot in that town of peace-freaks._ _I liked it there, but I was forgetting who I was. _

He could feel Virginia's anger for him threefold within the kiss. It was _wild_. Eventually he pulled away and regarded her with a cheeky smirk for a second, before turning around and walking down the tunnel, to where he expected the monster den would be. Virginia's eyes were at his back, burning into him. "Sorry honey," He sung in the most syrupy sweet voice he could muster, "Let's do the rest once I kill the monster and save the girl. Have fun in the dark."

There was a familiar rustle of metal and Jet knew without turning around that Virginia had drawn both her ARMs on him. Jet stopped in his tracks. "Give me back that torch." She demanded in a hot, furious tone. "Give it back _right now_."

Of course conceding to that demand was out of the question. Jet's pride as a drifter was at stake. He smiled into his red and white scarf and bowed his head slightly, saying only a single word. "No." He knew she would not shoot him. He began to walk away again.

"I mean it, Jet Enduro!"

He left.

And he was right. She did not shoot him. She did not even try.


	5. Little Leviathan

(A/N: I just spent an entire chapter describing Jet crossing a pool of water. Damn, I suck. :P)

Jet felt empowered by what he had done, but also felt badly about it, if only slightly. He had just left Virginia, whom he honestly did care about alone and lost in the dark. And for what? To flaunt whatever power he had over her in a childish outburst to prove that he was alive. That was the problem with winning an argument against a loved one, afterwards, _always_ afterwards, you felt terrible for winning the fight. It was a valueless victory.

The solemn sound of the crackling torchlight felt like a near silent accusation of his convictions. He was a bastard, like Virginia had said, he knew this, but he did not _want_ to be. It was all so goddamned complicated.

The level of the floor was becoming deeper and rockier, with the leveled earth smelling stronger and fresh. Jet was somehow gratified that he had managed to lift his torch from Virginia, or else he would have tripped down here a countless amount of times, regardless of how finely tuned his other senses were. The ceiling was sinking lower, just barely grazing his head. As the tunnel thinned out Jet knew that he was growing closer. What would he find there? A dragon and a pile of scorched little girl bones? Best that he face the beast alone and save Virginia the danger, her life was not as expendable as he.

Abruptly he stepped in something sticky, and then his leg felt the cool and somewhat shocking chill of cold water. He had trodden into the edge of a small and stagnant underground creek, kept frosty by the lack of sunlight and warmth. Rarely had Jet felt a water so cold and so _alien_ to his touch. He backed up a bit and studied the area about him carefully, making an assessment of the landscape so he could continue as far as the torchlight would allow.

The walls were dotted with strange white spores that were attached firmly by long white strings of thread that appeared to be silky and soft, but glistened more like mucous in the dim light. Some of them had been torn open, Jet observed, from the inside out. Below that, dark shapes moved about in the water, slithering like underwater serpents. He had meant to have stalked the monster, but it seemed like he had found its breeding ground instead. There was no other discernable way forward except for straight ahead, through the water and those dark shadows within.

Were they dangerous? Jet picked up a small angular hunk of stone and hefted it into the pool of water. He was tempted to try and skip it as well as he could, but in the end it would have accomplished nothing. It made a quiet splash and settled down into the water with no problems, no disturbances at all. The weird sea snakes in the pool had ignored it completely. Would they ignore Jet as well if he decided to wade on through?

It still felt a little too dangerous for him to risk it. If they happened to be carnivorous he would be eaten alive in the water, and death by piranha-like creature was not too appealing to him. There was only one last way for him to check and see if it was safe. Reaching into his jeans Jet pulled out a small pocket knife and cut a shallow gash along the surface of his palm, drawing a little bit of blood but not hurting himself too severely. It gathered in his hand and Jet held it over the water, turning it on his side and feeling the warm slick burn drip into the waters below.

He expected a wild fizzle of bubbles as a thousand hungry jaws would have made with gnashing, starving teeth. The blood would be like a drop of the sweetest honey to them, if they had an interest in Jet's flesh, then they would jump like a trick pony right now, on the button. The waters were calm, interrupted only by the small trickle of the blood landing in the pond. The water snakes continued to move through and around the water carelessly, as if Jet was not there.

So he had his answer. It wouldn't be pleasant, but it had to be done.

Jet decided to walk through the water and beyond it, hoping that land and the way to the den lay ahead. Two problems remained, though. The water looked deep and frighteningly cold, if he got his torch the slightest bit wet, it would go out immediately and become useless, leaving him in the dark. He could walk through the water with one of his hands raised, keeping the torch safe from harm, but there was also the question of his Airget-Lamh. If that got wet as well, if the gunpowder in the shells became damp and clumped together like sand, his weapon would be totally useless, it would not fire.

The drifter didn't think he could walk through water with both his arms raised, he would need at least one of them to help guide his way and steady his path through the muck. If he tried, he would lose his balance and fall into the water, rendering his journey as pointless. He would be forever lost in the dark.

A voice within him whispered; _Go back and get Virginia. Apologize to her and she'll help you, she can carry the ARMs while you can carry the torch. You'll both be safe and well together. The only thing you'll lose is your pride, and that's a small thing compared to your weapon and your light. You can survive without it._

"Bullshit." Jet growled to himself angrily, recognising the voice as the Jet from Baskar Colony, a voice that he was comfortable with calling Baskar Jet. Voices, he was hearing voices in his mind and giving them names. Maybe he _was_ sick. Sick in the head.

…_Do you want the last memories that Virginia will have of you to be bad ones?_

To this he did not answer. Crouching down, Jet had had an idea. He could argue with himself later. The boy tugged hard on his red and white scarf and unraveled it from his neck, spreading out the tattered material on the dry ground around him. As his arm reached out to smooth out the creases in the fabric, Jet was surprised to see that his skin had a slight sheen to it, coated in a thin layer of sweat despite being stuck in the middle of the cold earth. He raised his hand to his face and wiped away forming beads of sweat, feeling that his cheek and his forehead was warm, too warm, _far_ too warm for a climate such as this. And yet he had not noticed it before.

What could he do about it now? The only thing he could do was to press on. He could worry about the fever later. Jet placed his Airget-Lamh on his scarf and then, with the greatest of care, laid his burning torch beside it, trying his hardest not to disturb the flame. He wrapped the scarf over it once, lifted the two items up together like a newborn baby, and then wrapped it again, and a third time, this time binding it around his left hand. He spun the cloth around his hand and the two items firmly and tightly until his fingers throbbed with a lack of circulation, the silver-haired drifter trying the ends together securely and firmly at the wrist. This was the hardest part to do, as he only had one hand to do it with, making do with his right hand and his teeth.

There, it was done. Both items were attached securely and firmly to his hand.

_Just don't wave it around too much. If you do, you're liable to put the damned thing out._

"Yeah, yeah. I know." He mumbled, wading into the pool with long, steadying strides, keeping his legs carefully apart. There was that shocking cool rush again, swilling around his shins and trying to bore down into his bones. Jet sighed a little as he realised that the cold was caressing against the unwelcome feverish heat in his body, something that he never would have discovered if it weren't by total accident. But now it felt wonderful, magnificent, almost _heavenly_ to have it washed out of his system. It made him feel calmer, more in focus.

Something slimy wriggled past his leg, slippery and animated, like a waterborne worm. It snapped him immediately back to attention. There were _things_ all around him, leeches most likely, slithering and sliding and _sucking_ against his skin. Jet's heart fluttered in his chest, erratically, aroused by an injection of adrenaline into his system.

_Jesus Christ!_

He surged forward, panicked, sending up a small wave and a splash of spray.

Outlaw Jet, the enemy of Baskar Jet shouted out into his mind, alarmed and angry. _What the hell are you doing! Move like that and you'll put the torch out! I don't care if you're up to your legs, dick or eyes in the fucking things, you are **not** going to leave us in the dark. Calm down. Take tiny steps, don't think about it. If you lose your cool you are **dead**._

Sound advice. His own advice, if Jet recalled correctly. The boy exhaled sharply and felt that it did him a whole world of good, turning the butterfly-ish fluttering in his chest back into the nice and steady thumping once more. He moved forward once more, saying it to himself over and over again in his mind; _baby steps, baby steps, baby, steps…_

He was up to his waist in the black tepid water. It was like walking through a bowl of unstrained spaghetti in an odd and curious way, the worms below him floating about like bits of flaccid pasta, nudging, coiling and sailing past his legs and through his thighs. His arm began to ache slightly from holding it upwards so adamantly. He lowered it a bit and rubbed at his shoulder socket a little, trying to reduce the tension. The floor beneath his feet was not that rocky but he took great care in his steps anyway, feeling out with the point of his toe a little for his next step, scraping and shuffling for a safe flat floor.

Deeper still! Now he was up to the middle of his chest. It was becoming harder to move forward at this point, the force of the water pushing against him making it feel like he was trying to walk through a huge bowl of honey or golden syrup. It felt like hands were trying to shove him away. Jet raised his hand higher now, all too aware of the weight of the Airget-Lamh when only being held by one hand and the very possible chance of the torch coming loose from his scarf and falling, ker-splash, into the water. Just how deep did it go? Six feet? Nine feet? Three goddamn miles?

Armpits. Neck. Nose. Jet sucked in a breath before water swam above his mouth and nose and held it, pressing the pocket of air deep down into his lungs, as far as he possibly could. Walking was almost _impossible_ now, at any minute, no, at any _second_ Jet felt like he was going to tip over backwards and fall. His left arm, raised, felt like a thin stick supporting a heavy weight, the sinews in his arms screaming from the pressure. It had started off relatively light in the beginning, but now…

Oh, if _only_ he could change hands.

_I'm not going to make it. I'm going to lose it, I'm going to drown. Why the hell did I even think I could-_

_**Shut up. **I **can **make it._

_I **know** I can._

He made it. Somehow, in some way, he had made it. The floor of the pool had crept upwards again when he had moved, sucking his heavy, seemingly lead-laden body forwards and beyond, almost crying out for joy when the cold mask of water had been removed from the front of his face. If another had been there to watch, they would have seen a white tuft of messy hair gliding through the murky water, below a pair of mysterious violet eyes and above a protected and flickering fire. They would have seen him walk from the water seemingly effortlessly, as if he had been born from the water itself, baptized in the pool of darkness.

Groaning as his feet were free of the water, Jet lurched to the side and felt his back slap hard against the side of the tunnel, the drifter loosing feeling in his knees and sinking down onto the floor. Coughing hard, he spat out a mouthful of water and also the felt the tainted pool water running from his nose, wiping at it with the back of his right hand. He felt like a drowned rat.

_I never want to do that again._ He thought, knowing that the other two Jet 'voices' in his mind would probably agree.

He unwound the scarf from his hand and used the cloth the dab the water and sweat from his face. He wasn't sure which was which. The torch was safe and still dry, burning merrily. The butt of his Airget-Lamh had apparently skimmed the surface of the water a few times, but the most important part of it, the barrel was as dry as a bone.

"Thank God." He said to himself in the dim light, running a hand through his sweaty and dampened hair. A short while ago he had been cold and arrogant, perfectly in charge of himself and the world, at least, in the presence of Virginia. Now it seemed like he had been thrown through the cracks of life, to this lost and forgotten god awful place. Why the hell should he thank God? But he did, anyway.

Without thinking, Jet leant forward over the pool again and dove his hand inside, wincing as his fingers closed around a slimy and squirming body. There was still that other mystery to be solved as well, what the hell those snakes or worms had been. The sensation he got was that he was grasping a gigantic gob of slime. Ripping his hand upward, he freed it from its watery home.

A long brown worm with a coral-like feathered head writhed and twisted in the boy's hand. It squeaked in fright and Jet's face contorted into a look of disgust and surprise, releasing it as soon as it had been caught. He knew what it was.

Mosquito larvae.

_Giant_ mosquito larvae.

"Bloodsuckers." Jet intoned stonily to the emptiness around him. "In the future, they'll be bloodsuckers."

He remembered their slippery caress and Jet shivered, drawing his legs up against his chest and wrapping his arms around them, giving himself a moment to pull himself back together. The monster that had taken the girl could fly, and it had flown off with her into here. He had already met its children.

It was going to be a tough fight.

Jet opened his eyes a little, coming to realise a horrific fact. Though he had escaped from the larvae-filled waters that had threatened to crush his heart in his chest, he could still feel the heavy, cold lead-lined pressure against his ribcage, like somebody had lain a sheet of hard metal against it and was pushing with firm steely arms.

The pressure, it was still there, making it hard to breathe, making his midsection tight with repressed stress.

It was happening again. Slowly, he granted that, but it was happening all over again.

And this time there was nobody there to stop it.


	6. Breakneck Speed

(A/N: Hahahahaha... Jet reminds me of Neo in this chapter. I just couldn't help but write it this way. Go Jet! You are The One!)

She awoke to total, uninhibited darkness. The right side of her face felt hot and puffy, undeniably damp, causing her to be certain that she was bleeding in some way. Lank hair stuck to it in strands and she peeled it away, hoping that it would help her to see better. No light was present in the wide earthy chamber she was in, almost two miles beneath the earth.

Her body was on the floor and twisted, the girl lying on her stomach and propping herself up by her bare elbows, her warm grey shawl lost ages ago. Where was she? She had not meant to fall into such a stupor causing a faint, and she certainly had not meant to awaken and find herself in the bleak opaqueness of the dark. It was like being hidden in a wardrobe at home, when she and her friends had played fun games of hide and go seek, inside the wardrobe with the doors closed, it had been nearly as dark as this. She remembered vaguely, as if conjuring up the outline of a dream she had had days ago, she remembered waiting for her daddy, waiting in the last hours of the night, and then…

Movement beside her crumpled form. Something long, thin and hairy brushed past her side, feeling like a soft, yet prickly cactus. She had a feeling that those hairs she felt scraping across her arm could easily and swiftly go rigid and sting like poisonous needles. What had caught her? What had grabbed her with arms of cold wire and lifted her up into the dawning air? What was it that had taken her that sounded like high-toned, sped up thunder, like the drone of a strong eagle flock flapping a hundred times within a second?

A deep pulsing fluorescent glow within the darkness. It lasted the duration of a human breath, rising and falling, spreading and then diminishing, but the girl caught a tiny glimpse of the monster that was holding her prisoner, a second of a glance, like a snapshot in her mind. She had seen clear stretched skin over a mottled grey exoskeleton. Gigantic multi-faceted eyes, bulbous, like a pair of living gems. Thin glassy wings, the appearance, if not the colour, of stain-glass church windows. Its wide expansive abdomen created the glow, a monstrous firefly tipped with a needle sharp proboscis.

The girl tried not to help it, but she screamed.

Within the second pulse of the monster's alien yellow glow, she saw its great head cock towards her, the eyes calculating every move that she made. It heard her and looked at her quizzically, like a regular person must feel when the stuffed dinner turkey stands up on its drumstick legs and starts to scream. Those _eyes_! How many different versions of her was that monster able to see?

She started to scoot her body away from it, her body hale and perfectly capable of standing up and running away, but it would be just too easy for that monster to take two steps and corner her once again, jamming that huge needle-like nose straight through her heart and sucking away all her sweet, precious blood. Her legs became paralyzed at that thought, from the hips downwards and she scrunched up as small as she could go, wondering why the creature had not just eaten her when she was unconscious. It would have saved her a whole world of fright.

A thought came to her during the steady cold glow of the monster's third abdominal pulse, one too terrifying and impossible to consider. She had not been hurt during the time that she had been swept up and away by the beast, but blood flowed freely down her face in a warm lazy stream. She had not done that herself and it seemed unlikely that bumping into the wall of a tunnel would have cut such a sharp and accurate gash across her temple. The creature must have done this, so why?

The answer was obvious. It was an insect, one that drank blood. It probably had billions of children in the darkness before her, the mother monster was going to offer her to them for food, little girl blood replacing sweet mother's milk. It had cut her with one of the prongs on its legs, to draw the blood and call them here. The dinner bell had been rung.

"Oh, sweet merciful Guardians, no…" She whispered, overcome by the sheer impact of her situation.

From the very far end of the chamber a second light flared into existence, this one constant and not beating to a tune of light-and-then darkness like the mother monster's fluorescent belly did. It was far smaller but coloured orange, attached to a stubby wooden stick held by a boy with pale silver-coloured hair. He had stepped through the entrance to the chamber as silently as a phantom, but the bright light he carried immediately gave him away. She recognised him, what was his name again?

"Jet!" She cried, her usually pretty and porcelain-like face ill-looking with terror. She was small and helpless beneath the body of an unimaginable foe, a veritable damsel in distress, but if there was any hope that she could gather regarding her rescue and a safe passage home, she was willing to take it. And she recognised this youth by sight alone, the fearsome drifter who had taken a sickly turn and had been recovering in her village, the friendly outsider. Had he come to save her?

"Jenny!" The drifter called out as an answer, his voice loud and carrying in the empty space of the mosquito den. He was hunched over slightly and dripping with water, she could see, his face was pale and yet at the same time flushed in places, but his eyes, they were hard and firmly set on the happenings of reality. He knew where he was and what he had to do. There was nothing left but to fight it out.

Even though he was breathing in and out steadily, it felt like, to Jet, that he was already holding his breath and was breathing over the top of that one, like his lungs had been packed with cotton or gauze. He could manage no more than quick and shallow breathing, something on the verge of hyperventilation. His chest felt full, completely filled up with the pounding of his heart. It was beating harder and faster than he had ever experienced before. Jet saw this gigantic towering creature and knew that it was for him alone, that it was his battle, his fight. The drifting God who had given him a purpose in life had left him His last blessing, the last bit of fun he'd ever have in combat.

Best not to let such a _beautiful_ opportunity go to waste.

"Time to die, motherfucker!" He roared and charged the monster, cocking his Airget-Lamh in his left hand. He had brought with him only enough ammunition that would fit into the chambers of the gun, as perfectly modified as it was, it could hold no more than six persistent ten second rounds of fire. For a single machine gun, that was pretty damned good, but this was a _big_ foe and Jet had to be careful, cautious. He couldn't just throw his ammunition away.

He decided to start off with something flashy first, to scare away the monster if he could. Jet got into proper range and raised his free hand, gathering medium energy. Heavier air, charged with magic crackled and gave off sparks around his fist. "Inspire!" He shouted, and brought his hand down hard and swift, emulating the strike of a bolt of lightning. The monster flinched when the simple hand motion became reality, a harsh purplish arc of electricity striking it on its abdomen. That'd give it a jolt where the sun don't shine, Jet thought.

The monster's cry was born more from surprise than from pain. It leant down on thin stick-like legs and the little girl beneath it rolled once to the side in the hopes of getting away safely, narrowly missing being flattened by the glowing light sac. She found herself leaning up against the wall and pressing into it, trying to disappear. "Jenny!" Jet called again, sidling towards the center of the den and getting into a battle stance, for armed combat. "Look, I'm gonna try to distract it for you. Try and run to the tunnel as soon as you think you can. If you don't wanna risk running, then creep along the wall until you're at the tunnel, okay?"

She calculated that the quickest way out would be to break into a fast sprint and bisect the area of the chamber. But that would be an excellent way to get herself killed. All the monster needed to do was stand on her. No, she felt _far_ more comfortable with the sneaking option, even if it took awhile longer. She hoped that Jet would be able to hold the beast off until then. "But Jet…" Jenny started. "What about you?"

Jet raised his ARM proudly. "I'll be fine. I've eaten monsters tougher than this one for breakfast. Just run the hell outta here as soon as you can." He looked at her in a smarmy fashion. "Everybody at Baskar is waiting for you to come back."

Her father, had her father set this up, this rescue? Thank God they had had Jet around to come and save the day. Swallowing hard, the girl nodded her head. "I'll creep around the side. I'll be quiet, and I'll try my best. Good luck."

Rearing up, the giant mosquito spread its glassy wings wide, wings that would have reflected and shone like the sun during a bright sunny day. But it was dark here in its home, so Jet could see straight through them, the blinding technique failing. The boy took a firmer hold on his weapon and fired a round of bullets into the chest of the monster, hearing a tinny grating clang as the leaden pellets struck another surface that sounded like thin aluminum, or corrugated iron. That exoskeleton sounded like it was tough, all right.

Its head came down quick and fast, hurling itself face-first towards Jet, who for a nanosecond wondered what the hell it was going to accomplish with a mere headbutt attack, seeing as its gigantic face was nothing more than a pair of soft red eyes. He'd get squelched, but its brain would most definitely die. Jet moved out of the way anyway, watching the creature's move and waiting to see if it would reveal any more of its special attacks.

He heard the air whistle and whoop with a sound similar to the swing of a rapier sword and the mosquito buried its needle-like nose three feet into the hard chamber floor, scarcely a yard away from where Jet was standing. A nasty weapon! It pierced through rock like a dentist's drill, he didn't want to imagine what it would be like to have that thing thrust straight through his body, impaled on the largest needle known to man. Perhaps after that, it would suck up all his blood as if through a straw, the fierce drifter becoming a tasty beverage. Jet glared at the needle, and then back up at the monster again. Avoid the face, got it.

The monster had gotten the needle in easily enough, but now it seemed to be having a fair amount of trouble pulling it out again. It yanked upwards a few times unsuccessfully, then Jet took a chance and kicked hard at the stuck needle in the middle of its length, hoping to snap it in half. It did not yield an inch and refused to break. It felt nearly indestructible, like a _real_ rapier sword. At the very moment that Jet had all of his weight upon the length of the needle nose, the mosquito pulled free and snapped its head upwards again, freeing itself and hurling Jet across the room at the very same time.

_Fuck!_ Jet screamed in his mind and then made the necessary adjustments to his body in order to land with minimal pain, the boy using his own body weight to flip himself over and land in a crouch, absorbing the brunt of the impact with the palms of his hands and his knees. He swore again, this time out loud, for the unexpected flight had forced him to let go of his weapon in the process, or he would have risked landing unevenly and breaking his neck.

The Airget-Lamh was under the monster's face. Panting, Jet looked up and beyond it, seeing Jenny up on her feet and edging along the wall. Bravely, she was doing what Jet had asked her to do. However, when their eyes met she froze, seeing the weapon as well. She was closer to it than Jet was, only a few yards away. If she could just get a hold of it and manage to throw it…

She left the wall and began to shuffle towards it, swaying slightly in her step. With the blood drying on her face, it made her look like an ashen zombie, or a beautiful ghoul. The mosquito, with its hundreds of tiny eyes could see everything in any direction. It saw her move and one back leg came up, preparing to stomp her to death.

"No! Stop! Don't move! _Vortex!_" Jet cried in a random burst of thought, hardly even aware that he had chanted a spell and moved his arm in a sweeping motion out in front of his body. The mosquito, leaning to the left in the act of raising one of its legs, caught the edge of Jet's spell and toppled over onto one side, landing in a pile of freshly moved boulders. Jenny was blown away by the spell as well, slamming against the wall and crying out in pain. He hadn't meant to hurt her, but he had to get her away from danger in any way that he could. The green gust of wind had cut an invisible path for him to move down, where neither the mosquito nor Jenny could be hurt.

Jet rose to his feet, coughed hard, and then fell to one knee again. It was a deep, hacking cough, the kind that brought blood up through the throat. Indeed he could even taste the slightly coppery tang on the base of his tongue. This couldn't happen now, not in the middle of combat.

_My left arm… feels all tingly…_

_That can't be good…_

The outer flesh of his left hand had gone numb. It felt like he was wearing a thick rubber glove, one that clung tightly to his skin. Jet looked at his hand worriedly. He knew that numbness often occurred when the limb in question was losing its proper circulation. But he needed this limb! It was his gun arm, the arm that channeled his spirit and gave him his edge. He had to finish this quick, before he lost feeling altogether.

He clenched his hand a few times, heartened when feeling came back slightly. _You can do that for me, can't you?_ He asked his aching body. _You can hold out for just one more battle. Just one more…_

A foul, sulphurous smell entered the air and Jet's nostrils. It smelt like a chemical brew, something that reminded him of laboratories and the test tube that he had come to life in. It made him want to gag. A screaming mewl rose and echoed all around him, coming from the monster flailing on the floor. Yellow glowing liquid leaked from its abdomen, gashed open beneath it by the grazing rocks. It must have ripped itself open as it fell.

The drifter moved forward and picked up his ARM where it had fallen. Moaning a little from the ache in her back, where she had been slammed against the wall, Jenny meekly walked towards him. Together they regarded the fallen creature with a mixture of pity and loathing. "Is it over now?" The girl asked of him meekly, daringly hoping that the nightmare could be finished.

"Not yet." Jet replied bitterly, unconsciously rubbing his left arm with a degree of discomfort. "It'll get up in a minute or so. You'd better run while you still have a chance." He looked to the entrance for a moment, where the torch he had dropped still burned, its flame diminishing. The fuel wrapped around the stick wouldn't last forever. "Take that torch with you and get outta here."

"No!" She answered vehemently, gesturing wildly with her hands. Jet noticed it with bemusement and remembered that he father reacted in the same way. "I can't leave you in here with that _thing_! It'd be no different than you trading your life for mine! I just can't do that, Jet!"

"Then…" The boy began, stepping out in front of her, watching with an eager scowl as the mosquito righted itself with one great heave of its body. It was bleeding badly from its abdomen, but he knew quite well that it took a lot more than that to keep an insect down. They barely even comprehended the meaning of pain. "Get to the entrance and stay the _hell_ out of my way."

She obeyed him this time. She _ran_.

It had had no victory whilst it stood upon the ground. The giant mosquito stretched its wings open again and beat them hard and rapidly, incredibly fast, causing gusts of wind and dust to swirl around its body in a miniature tornado. The sound that came from the monster was horrific, a high pitched whine that was coupled with a banshee's scream. It reverberated around the room, creating an echo. Jet dug his heels into the earth and stood his ground, his clothing and his scarf being whipped wildly around by the air. Slowly, the mosquito began to rise from the ground, like Lombardia beginning to take off.

Jet shielded his eyes from the dirt flying madly about, almost squinting them shut. He clenched his hand around the handle of his machine gun _hard_, painfully hard, enough to make him feel it once more. Wiping sweat from his flushed brow, too much sweat, it seemed, Jet felt the beautiful rush he remembered from days long past, of combat, of drifting, and of the paring of life from monotony. The one fragile second, experienced once when the force of the mind, the body and the soul were as one.

The crux. He saw it, drew upon it, and everything was clear.

He dashed forward and seized one of the creature's long spindly legs as firmly as he could, hurling his weight forward and putting his trust into the limb. The hairs along the legs were minute and painful, yet it somehow managed to let him cling there more resolutely, acting like a natural form of Velcro. Wrapping his legs around the cold hard pole and getting the sensation that he was rising along with the monster, lifting him higher and higher into the air, Jet worked hard to pull himself upwards and crawl further along the limb, feeling like a small child climbing a tall palm tree.

The hairs were beginning to catch on his clothing and they tried to hold him there, making it harder for him to reach higher ground. They stung badly whenever they managed to touch bare skin. Eventually he reached forward and pulled himself up with both arms, swinging one leg over and rolling onto the monster's back. He was very nearly blown off immediately, so strong and powerful the beat of those wings were. Jet fell to his knees and continued to crawl forward, keeping his balance in check and feeling like both his eardrums were going to burst.

Something warm and wet slithered down the curve of his jaw. Jet didn't dare to reach a hand up and discover what was there, but he was more than half certain it was blood pouring out of the inner workings of one ear. If he stayed here any longer he'd lose his sense of hearing. As he reached the middle of the insect's back he discovered that it was relatively calm there, like an eye of the storm, but the sound was also at its worst.

Blood dripping down his chin, Jet came to a decision. _I can't take much more of this. One more minute and I'll be totally deaf. If I stand up and run into those winds, I'll definitely be blown away. Crawling would take too long, my brain might bust under the pressure. I'll have to…_

Suddenly he had an idea. Jet smiled in the midst of the maelstrom.

…_Yeah, that might work._

_Here goes nothing!_

Jet used the very last trick up his sleeve. If this didn't do it, nothing would. The drifter lifted himself into a sprinter's crouch and took a moment to calm his racing heart, to reach into himself and find a form of peace. When the swirling thoughts within his mind seemed to halt and come to a standstill, he acted. Jet dove forwards and felt the air move around him, felt _time and space itself_ slow around his working body, everything winding down, acting in slow motion.

_Nothing_ moved faster than Jet Enduro in the middle of his accelerator technique.

He bypassed the tornado of wind easily, experiencing nothing more than a soft pleasant wind on his face. The mosquito's wings, probably beating a hundred times a second, moved like the oars of a large rowboat, slow and ungainly. It felt like he was floating effortlessly in space, the only thing moving faster than his body was his mind. Jet rolled to the side once in mid-air, just as he was sailing over his enemy's gigantic bulbous head, then drew his ARM as fast as he could, making use of the last five rounds packed tightly into the machine.

The machine gun vibrated steadily in his numbing hands as it fired shell after shell after shell. He was moving forwards too fast to make full use of his gatling attack, so Jet tilted his upper body forwards a little and marked his fall point on the ground beneath him, blowing open huge sores in the back, the front and the underside of the creatures head and neck. Clear optical fluid splashed upwards slowly in little shining bubbles, almost seeming pretty to Jet's eyes.

_Take **that**, bastard._ Jet thought in the last few moments of his attack, right before the entire world caught up to him again.

Even when Jet was in top form, coming out of an accelerator technique was like being hit in the face by a wet fish. There really was no better way to describe it than that. This time it felt like reality itself had cracked and broken into a thousand tiny pieces before him, for one brief little second, Jet could have sworn than he had seen the spectral backdrop of the world between those tiny, jagged cracks. White spots of light burst behind Jet's eyeballs, he screamed from the onset of a stabbing pain throughout his skull, and when he hit the floor again, this time he landed on his shoulder _hard_, hearing a loud, almost watery crack. He had been unable to keep up.

Smoke rose from the barrel of the Airget-Lamh, the machine contented and spent. From above, the giant mosquito's face caved in with a sickening gush of fluid and jelly-like damp grey matter. They had been shot to ribbons. In fact, as the monster wobbled and sunk down onto the floor, its wings and the terrible whining noise going still, the impact _far _louder than Jet's had been, a metallic tinkling sound was heard, bullet pellets flowing out and sliding onto the ground in a thick puddle. It was dead even before Jet had touched the ground.

Jet and the monster had dueled evenly in the field of battle. The boy had emerged the victor.

However…

Neither of them rose ever again.


	7. Hold Your Breath

(A/N: The writing updates for this fic are growing further and further apart. I think that's because I'm putting a little more effort into each chapter than I did before. I really am enjoying this J/V, and in this chapter I try my hand at fluff for the first time. I hope I did it right.)

The silence, that was hell.

People never understood the true horrors of war unless they were the ones fated to come back to the battlefield after the fighting was over, to stand in the middle of a barren wasteland strewn with corpses and carrion birds and be ordered to clean the whole thing up. To write to each fallen soldier's loved ones and explain to them why they were no longer alive. To deliver the terrible news themselves. It was not real combat, but it was the true, vicious bedrock of the war.

Even in a smaller scale of things, the concept was still the same. Jenny the Baskar looked over the large cavernous room and gagged at the sight of the dead mosquito's body, pressing her hands to her mouth and turning away in time to keep herself from retching. It had been shot full of holes in its face and it was bleeding clear insectile blood like a small river onto the floor. The carcass steamed and fizzled in front of her, stinking of watery streams of that weird phosphorescent glow. It seeped into the earth like illuminating urine, continuing to keep the whole area brightly lit. What had it eaten earlier to create such an eerie glow? Well, it no longer mattered now.

Jet was a second, smaller lump on the ground, his body twisted into an unnatural position. There was no blood on the floor around him, but he looked like a dropped child's toy, one that had been mauled by the family dog. He had fallen from a great height, she had seen it happen right before her eyes, so he probably needed urgent medical attention.

He raised himself up from the floor by his elbows a little, shivering like his legs had been crushed by a tremendous rock. They were crumpled beneath him. Gritting his teeth hard, Jet tossed his head back and screamed.

Jenny found her legs and ran for Jet, wincing as the hard rock tore at her feet and made her stumble in some places. She watched Jet heave hard and claw at his chest raggedly like an alien was about to burst out of it. Hysterical fingers tore a gash in his shirt, revealing a sliver of his skin beneath. Jet's face scrunched up in a look of utter agony, the face of one who could feel one's own organs failing beneath him. His throat and lungs had locked themselves closed, his windpipe feeling like it was closing up to the size of a pinhole.

The fall had been nothing. The energy it had taken to use the accelerator technique, well, that was a completely different story.

She grabbed him as Jet was about to fall onto his face, steeling his body against hers. His wet shirt and short jacket clung to his body like a damp second skin, and now that she was close enough to touch Jet, she could feel for herself how he was shivering due to the cold clothes and the heat of his fever, _both at the same time_.

No, perhaps he was trembling for a third reason as well. Fear. She had to do something. She was no medicine woman, even if she was a daughter of the Baskar tribe, but that was no excuse for her to not do a thing. She owed her life to Jet. "It's alright, don't panic!" She shrilled frantically into Jet's ear, raising her medium-wielding hand. She was only thirteen years old, barely come of age, so she was inexperienced in the art of the medium. But some of them knew recuperative spells. She had to see if she could do the same thing.

"Odoryuk, Guardian of Life, I beg of you, ease this boy's pain! Please heal him!" She cried, upon the verge of tears. A faint blue glow emanated from her hand and she pressed it against Jet's chest, over his heart, where the pain seemed to be. He moaned as a response and tried to shrink away from her touch, it felt like stinging fire to him. Cringing, she tried the technique again. She wasn't even sure what kind of spell she was trying to cast. It was useless.

Extra footsteps drew near as Jet started to audibly gasp for air, breathing frantically against the girl's small chest. It took a few seconds for her to realise that he wasn't just making random choking noises, he was trying to form coherent words, calling out for somebody lost in the dark.

"Virgini…a. Vir…gin…ia. Oh… God pl…ease, make her… come back…"

His reached his hand out, past Jenny's body, then his pain wracked face broke down into a tired, wounded smile. Virginia dashed through a bend in the tunnel and came into proper view, bone dry and panting, a wind crest in her hand. She had probably used it to get across the larvae pond without getting wet. Noticing the frightened little girl and the shaking outlaw in her arms, she ran to them, calling out his name.

"Jet! Jet! Oh Gods, what has happened to you!" She skidded to her knees before him and Jet pulled himself away from the Baskar girl, falling into Virginia's arms, some very basic part of his mind telling him that Virginia was good for him, that Virginia was a familiar face. If he was closer to her, everything would be all right. Besides, she was warm, as warm as she could possibly be. Warmth equaled safe.

Jenny glanced at the other woman with panic-riddled eyes. "I'm sorry! The monster had me trapped, it was going to feed me to its children, but then Jet came and he fought the monster by himself! He _saved_ me! But then, he did something that made him move very fast, and afterwards, he just collapsed and started to scream!"

Virginia held up a hand to silence her if she was preparing to say any more. "That's enough for now. Help me get these wet clothes off him, or he'll freeze to death!"

The Baskar girl nervously complied. Together they began to strip the clothes off Jet, his jacket and his wet, clinging shirt, along with his shoes, socks and scarf. Jet growled out in the midst of his pain and tried to slap Virginia away when her hands moved towards the buckle of his pants, so she begrudgingly left those on. She hoped it wouldn't lower Jet's temperature too much. Jenny had searched around the area and brought back her grey shawl, it had fallen from her shoulders when the monster had brought her inside. Virginia took it from her and began to rub it vigorously across Jet's upper body, trying her hardest to rub warmth and feeling back in.

It had scarcely been two minutes since Jet had fallen, but a great section of the chamber wall blew open and small cracks ran along the area around it, weaving like a spider's web. Two men kicked and pushed at the rubble still blocking them inside until they were able to scale over it, Clive having a little bit of extra trouble because of the large ARM strapped to his back. The hole they had made was a few meters up from where the floor chose to be and they dropped down gracefully, keeping their balance. Clive adjusted his glasses. "That took a little longer than was expected, but now we seem to be here." He said.

Gallows had cocked his head slightly, listening to something that was below the wavelength of sound. Intuition, perhaps. "Hold it." He said abruptly. "Something seems wrong. Something smells wrong too." He caught a glance at the dead mosquito and grimaced in understanding. "Yeah, that thing there would be it."

Clive squinted into the darkness. His eyesight wasn't that good, and it was even worse while he was underground. Largely it made him feel like a mole. "Is that Virginia and the child over there that I see, Gallows? Or could it be something else?" They walked forward, moving towards the shapes that were on the other side of the den. When they recognised who was there, their walk broke into a run.

The Baskar Priest took over. "What's wrong with him?" He asked the two girls.

"He's having another fit." Virginia answered with a steely voice. "Gallows, can't you help him?"

"Move out of the way!" Clive cried, elbowing Gallows away and reaching for Jet. He seized the boy by the shoulder and pulled him towards himself, reaching into one of the inner pockets of his coat for an item. He procured two small, white pills and forced them down Jet's throat, hating to be so rough but knowing that time was the most important factor. He rubbed Jet's throat a shade too hard, trying to coax the boy's involuntary reflexes in order to make him swallow. He did, and Clive let go, moving away.

"Alright." Gallows grumped, annoyed that Clive had forced him away. "Stretch him out on the floor and tilt his head back so that his airways are clear." Virginia and Jenny did this hastily, working side by side. Gallows hovered over them anxiously. "Right, now I'm going to press down on his heart real hard six times, and as soon as I'm done, Ginny, I want you to seal his mouth with yours and give him four strong puffs of air. We'll wait for six seconds and if he doesn't start up by himself again, we'll do it again and again until he does."

"What's going on?" Jenny asked miserably, tugging on Clive's coat sleeve.

"Jet has stopped breathing." Clive said sternly, the expression on his face grisly. "His heart is not beating at its proper rate and it needs stimulation in order to get back into proper order. If that can be done, then his breathing should continue. It is called arrhythmia."

Jenny still did not understand. She did not say it out loud. Instead, she prayed. Meanwhile, Gallows and Virginia were trying their hardest to resuscitate Jet, the large Baskar priest with his palms on top of the other and pounding Jet's chest like he was trying to squash a bottle full of water, calling out each push to Virginia who counted them single-mindedly. She breathed hard into the boy, trying her best to keep her breath under control, but it was difficult because of her repressed hysteria. Jet's lungs were inflating when she breathed into him and deflating when she pulled away to wait, but in the time between they were as still as a corpse.

"Dammit!" Gallows grunted, receiving no reaction. Clive was close by, watching quietly. He hoped those pills that he had given the boy would kick in soon. He was no stranger to the harshness of a heart attack, he _had_ learned under the wing of an elderly man who had had two of them in his lifetime. Clive had been there both times. Berlitz and Jet were two very different people, but still, experience helped.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity full of torturous waiting and hoping, Virginia breathed one last puff of wind into Jet's lungs and the silver-haired youth contorted underneath her, arching his back and ripping his mouth away from hers, tilting his head to the side and coughing raggedly. He started to take deep whooping breaths, kicking Gallows feebly away and curling up on the floor. It was most likely that he wasn't properly conscious, but at least he was still alive.

Virginia's face looked wearied. "Thank God." She said weakly, wiping at her eyes, her hands grimed with dirt. She left a little dusty smudge on the side of her face. "Gallows, you saved his life."

"Naw, we all did." The Baskar demurred, standing up onto his feet. "Every single one of us. Right?" Smiling, Virginia nodded her agreement. Jenny blushed, trying to catch up with everything that had happened so fast. Gallows looked at Clive. "What was that stuff you gave him? I didn't know you kept drugs on you."

Clive raised his hands in defeated refusal. "It was a compound designed to thin the substance of blood in Jet's body. I believe it contained codeine. It was my hope that with his blood thinned to a proper degree, it would be able to pass through his heart more easily and keep himself alive. I am not sure if it worked or not, but…"

Gallows raised an eyebrow. "Where did you get a hold of something like that?"

"It is nothing special." Clive admitted, sweatdropping. "It is… baby aspirin. It cures… um, headaches. Works well on children." He said this meekly, then laughed.

"Well, wonders never cease." Gallows replied, sighing.

xxx

Black sand. A twilight sky. The desert.

Jet was watching the dunes and the dark sky, a thin layer of orange sunset separating the two from one another. For miles and miles around, the black sand appeared to be undisturbed. He was sitting on a flat rock beneath a withered and gnarled tree. Adam Kadmon was there beside him, though he was standing instead of sitting.

_"Where am I?"_ Asked Jet out loud, but when his mouth opened to form the proper words, no sound ushered forth. He was silenced, and yet, he was still speaking. The drifter blinked once in surprise.

Adam Kadmon looked at the boy in knowing bemusement. He scuffed at the sand a bit, curiously shifting it around, but not a grain moved. _"Where do you think you are?" _The Filgaia Sample replied cryptically. _"This is a desert of no winds, of calm volcanic sands, of no footprints left behind. A desert of no heat, and a desert of no frost, either."_

_"No living creatures." _Jet concluded, understanding and turning back to look at the wasteland.

Adam Kadmon smirked, flicking his red and white scarf over his shoulder. He was three times the age of Jet, the Jet that should have lived a long natural life. _"Yes. This is the Wandering. The last, long, endless drifter flight. When released from their mortal forms, it's the nature of spirits to wander the entirety of existence in all its forms, until they are called back to mortality again. There isn't a second in your eternal life span, Jet, in which you do not wander. This is the beginning of your next great journey."_

_"Life is a journey," _Jet agreed, _"Where you take a million different pit stops along the road. Maybe death is just another kind of pit stop. Hell, maybe **life** is just another kind of pit stop. This desert… It looks… so long… so tiring…"_ Just watching it was making him feel weary.

Sympathetically, Adam Kadmon set his hand upon Jet's ethereal shoulder. _"The one thing we can be certain of," _The specter of Jet's older self said, _"Is that in the Wandering, souls from the past can join up again once more."_

_"I hope so."_ Said Jet, and then he was gone.

xxx

Outside.

Jet noticed the change only by the enormous, violating bright light that had suddenly appeared all around him, something he was now unused to. Though he squinted his eyes shut as firmly as he could, a vibrant red glare still managed to pierce through. He tried to curl up into himself, as if the act would shut himself away from everything that was bad and painful. The strong, cradling arms he was in prevented him from doing that, and he was unable to pull himself away. Somebody had carried him out of that terrible den of beasts, either Gallows or Clive, or one of the Baskar rescue company that had followed them. It was so utterly degrading to be carried like a wounded child, but Jet was no longer able to care.

His heart felt weak and sore, possibly enflamed with some kind of disease, or the embarrassing uselessness of old age. The pain was still there but it felt more or less tamed now, it had drained virtually all of his strength and now he felt as helpless as a newborn kitten. Sounds came and went lopsidedly, powerful or normal on one side, but fuzzy and distorted on the other side. The light was far too strong for him. He kept his eyes closed.

Time was too hard to measure. At some point he was placed with the utmost of care upon a tarpaulin outside, although he could feel the hard grasslands beneath it. The blanket he had been wrapped in was replaced, as it was damp with residual larvae water and sweat. The newer blanket he felt about him was handled by a person in purplish pink, somebody familiar, of course, but too difficult for him to see. His eyes had only been open a slit now, to filter out the bright sunlight through the lashes, but he opened them properly in the hopes that he could see who it really was, desperately praying that his eyesight had not been damaged as well.

Virginia was beside him, trying to keep the injured boy warm. He had been completely limp and lifeless up until this very moment, it had been disconcerting for her, but Clive, who had been carrying him at the time reassured her that Jet's consciousness had been turned inwards naturally, where it would not be harmed from his fall. He was only in a state of shock now, trying to heal. Now he opened his eyes and he looked at her. At first his gaze seemed to shoot through her, but then his eyes refocused and he looked at her, recognising her for who she was.

Her arm was supporting his back, propping him into a sitting up position. The blanket was wrapped securely around his front, holding his arms down against his sides. Virginia watched him try to move his left arm. His strength was so poor that the blanket itself was enough to barricade him from success. All that healing and growing he had done in Baskar Colony, the harvest he had sown and reaped, it was all for nothing. It had become less than nothing, Jet seemed to be far worse. A hundred times worse. He appeared to be, and Virginia's heart shuddered just to think about it, close to the verge of death.

But he could see her. He could _see_ her.

That counted for something, didn't it?

Jet opened his mouth to say something. All that came out was a hoarse whistle. Virginia silenced him by gently hooking her finger under his chin and pressing his jaw closed. He obeyed her action implicitly, there simply was nothing else for him to do. Virginia smiled at him kindly, tearfully. "You don't have to say anything, Jet. Save it for when you feel better. I'm not mad at you, I know that's just how you are."

_Just how he was…_

She could hear herself saying that. Jet _was_ a drifter, _was_ a Sample, and _was_ her love. He was so small and helpless now, so weak. The plague inside his body had broken him, _was_ breaking him, and what other job did she have but to watch? The answer presented itself to her now, in stark black and white. She had to watch Jet die.

Her beautiful sad smile crumpled before him, and Virginia let go of Jet in order to raise her hands to her face and cover it, beginning to weep. Sharp, muffled kittenish sobs began to emerge from her, despite the girl trying her best to smother them away. She was not mad at him, even though he had acted like a selfish asshole on so many occasions. She was nor mad at the Council of Seven either, who had made this boy in that tragic, fatally flawed way. And, strangely enough, she was not mad at the monster that had brought on Jet's second heart attack, monsters were hardly sentient, they could not be blamed. She was mad at herself, absolutely furious that there was nothing more she could do to make Jet's life a better place.

Jet was sitting up all by himself. The fact that this was now a major accomplishment for him seemed several different shades of sad, but Jet did not notice or feel this at all. Sitting up made him feel dizzy. His mouth worked clumsily, his vocal chords feeling like dry sticks in his throat. He wanted to talk to her, to say things to her while he still could. And the one plea that was most prominent in his mind at the moment was;

"Vuh… guh… ginia. Ownt… ki…"

He wasn't sure if his balance had overcome him, or if he had moved of his own free will. Jet shifted his arms slightly, which caused the blanket bound around his body to slide down into a little pool within his lap, revealing his bare shoulders and front. Jet's eyes were dull and downcast, ashamed. He could not even speak the proper words. He fell forward slowly, clumsily but with some kind of careful precision. Virginia pulled her hands away from her face and gasped when Jet pressed against her and pushed her onto the ground, the crown of his head accidentally bumping against her chin.

So they were both there now, Virginia lying flat on her back with a barely comprehensible Jet on top of her. His faintly wiry body was wracked with palpable tension, but also utter resignation. His unclad arms reached out to grasp at her as best as he could, one slipping behind her waist, the other moving to rest near the back of one shoulder blade. Jet's head rested safely upon the crook of her neck and her collarbone. It was almost a weak, tender hug.

"Jet…" She said uneasily, moving her own arms so that they encircled around his back. The boy shook his head slightly, refusing whatever it was that Virginia was going to say, in the off chance that she was going to order him to get off, _now_. They were at a quiet campsite upon the foot of the Zenom mountains, Clive and Gallows could come by at any time, along with the rest of the Baskars.

When Jet shook his head, a small trickle of something wet rolled down her neck. Tears? She had never seen Jet cry before, such things almost seemed to be beyond him. It made Virginia want to cry again herself. "Oh Jet…" The way he was holding her, like a child clinging onto an article of comfort, it didn't seem like he was going to rise again until he had finished crying. That way she would not have to see the tears on his face.

"I… hym sorry. 'M sorry… fuh being a jerk. This has never happened to me… before…"

His voice was coming back. That was good. His harsh breathing made the words rough around the edges, and his body felt light, much lighter than Virginia had remembered it before. He had covered up the failings of his body with big haughty words. Like a magician performing a simple card trick, he had lead people to believe that he was rapidly recovering, while in private he had properly stoically fretted as his body struggled to get back up to proper speed.

Soothingly she caressed the nape of his neck softly, in the hopes that it would help him feel calmer. Of all the people in Filgaia, he had chosen her to be honest to. To be weak to. Sometimes he was a bastard, most times, actually, but he could also be the opposite as well. This was the first time he had really, honestly _tried_. It said a lot about Jet's strength of mind.

Was it not Virginia's duty to be an emotional crutch for him to lean on, whenever he needed it the most? She thought so. Jet sighed against her caressing hand, and she spoke in a quiet, agreeable voice, the choke of her recent weeping fit carrying in her tone like a scent on the wind. "I know it's very scary for you right now. Anybody with real common sense would be as frightened as you are. So it's alright for you to cry now, Jet, if you really need to. I'm the only one here that'll notice. I won't say a word."

The boy stiffened slightly, like he had been accused of a crime. "'M not crying." He rasped, hoping that she would not notice his reddened eyes and his slightly running nose when he sat up again, _if_ he ever would. If he bluntly admitted to her his weakness so easily now, well, he might as well go find a sharp knife and get down to the business of cutting his own balls off right now. She could suspect as much as she wanted to, she was entitled to that, but he would not confess to it openly and freely.

Virginia knew he was going to say that. She smiled. "Okay then. I believe you. Take as long as you want."

He took her up on her offer. His tears had only been ephemeral, so they had just about stopped at the beginning, but still he clung onto her, like an island in rough surf, like she was the last connection he had to a world he had once been on top of. Eventually his arms lost the strength and tautness that they had once had and went lax around her body, his head cushioned against her breast. Tentatively Virginia got her elbows beneath her and pushed herself up with her lower arms, attempting to sit up herself while at the same time trying not to disturb Jet. She half expected him to whine and grab onto her even tighter.

But that was not the case. He had slid lower down Virginia's body when she had moved, and now she could see that Jet's face was relaxed and peaceful in the midst of calm oblivion, in a place where he could not feel any pain. The deep breathing was a pretty good giveaway too. "Jet?" Virginia called softly, just in case he could still hear her, placing a hand against the side of his face. His fever was cooling down some, and that was a blessing sent from above.

Jet did not answer her. He had fallen asleep.


	8. Join The Dance?

Jet was carried grimly back to Baskar Colony. A stretcher was crudely constructed of long tree branches and strong linen under Gallows' direction and four strong Baskar men were assigned to carry it, even though the task did not require much strength at all. It was one of the physical ways that the colony was willing to show their gratitude to Jet. Jenny's father, Leo, was one of the men that carried him home.

The boy spent the time in travel either asleep, or resting in a state of semi-consciousness. It was understandable, regarding all that he had gone through. They walked back the entire way, because if the Maxwell Gang would have chosen to use their horses, Jet and the others would have invariably been left behind. Virginia was always at the stretcher's side, sometimes holding Jet's hand. Clive and Gallows lagged behind, bringing up the company's rear. Jenny was forced to stay in the middle of the entourage, so she could be watched at all times. They didn't want her disappearing all over again.

The pool of larval insects had been taken care of before they left the Zenom mountains. Virginia had not hesitated to tell the others about it, particularly how disgusting it was. She discovered that Jet had been drenched because he had _swum_ through that dark moving waters, and she could not conceive of how he had done such a thing. It was just so _gross_. In any case, the Baskar rescue team made short work of those leech-like cretins, pouring a nice strong layer of flammable lamp oil over the pool and the setting it aflame with a fire arcana. The larvae did not stand a chance. No second generation of giant blood-seeking mosquito would ever rise again.

Virginia had managed to traverse the deepest darkest tunnels of the monster's lair without a torch in a very ingenious and inventive way. Like Jet, she had stumbled blindly in the pitch blackness for what seemed like a huge expanse of time, the only thing giving her minute flashes of the ground beneath her feet was her faithful tinder crest. It was all a matter of trial and error, and slow, careful movement.

When she had reached the pool of water the girl had thrown some small elemental gems right before the dip of the earth crept into the pond, and had turned them into large clear buoyant blocks, using her change crest. She had pushed them into the blindness before her and used them like a rickety bridge, sailing over it on her wind crest. Her tools had helped her in a way that the torch couldn't have.

The two men in her team spoke softly about their wasted time in the tunnels. Clive and Gallows had chosen paths that had appeared to lead away from one another, but in actuality had been the beginning and ending of one long circular path. It had arched around the main monster den in a perfect circle. The two had met each other in the expansive dark, the light of their torches giving each other's location away. Despite this, they met face to face with their ARMs drawn at each other's head, in case they were an enemy. Knowing that their selection had been a failure, Clive with his sharp ears had heard voices coming from one of the tunnel walls, and so had done the one thing that seemed sensible. He blew it up.

It had all been so perfectly timed, almost as if a Guardian had had a hand in the making. Because they had all been together as one, Jet's life had been spared. Any less and they would not have been able to save him. Virginia hoped that Jet would have a kind word to say to them once he had become fully conscious.

Along the way a trained medicine woman performed a quick diagnostic of Jet's condition. She could not do much more until they got back to the colony. As she checked the boy over, her expression grew ever more serious. From that point, she left Jet alone. Virginia didn't like that very much, although she spied the woman speaking to Leo at one point in their soft and musical native tongue, whispering so she could not hear.

A lot had happened. By the time they reached the boundary of the colony the morning had become the hot afternoon, the large Filgaian sun burning like a bright orb in the sky. No time was wasted, as soon as their procession came to a stand still in the middle of the village, Jet was confiscated by a small team of tribal doctors and was taken away. The medicine woman from before joined them. When Virginia tried to follow, two of the men who had been carrying the stretcher reached out and restrained her.

"Hey!" She cried, trying to rip her arms away from their strong grip. "Let me go! I have to go see Jet!" Shane approached the group gracefully from his home, looking particularly worried. Virginia glanced towards him desperately, hoping for salvation. "Shane, please! Make them let me go!"

Shane raised a hand and offered her a wan little smile, trying to calm her down. "Leo sent a carrier hawk and contacted us ahead of time, about Jet's condition. I'm sorry to hear what has happened to him. He seemed to be doing so well before." He paused for a moment and then frowned, seeing his older brother and Clive loitering about the council stone. They knew they had done all that they could do. How could he explain to Virginia the same thing? "The doctors need to have their time with him, and they cannot be disturbed. I'm sorry Virginia, but for now you have to consider Jet typically off-limits. Grandmother is in there too, heading the secondary diagnostic and treatment, so don't think of it as total strangers taking care of him."

Virginia had stopped struggling a little while earlier, so the two Baskars had let go. She stepped away from him, towards Shane. Slowly she brought her arm back, rolling the joint in its socket. Suddenly she looked incredibly, innumerably exhausted, many years older than her beautiful nineteen year old self. She didn't need a doctor to tell her just how sick Jet was, she had seen it in his haunted stares, had felt it in the weight of his tiring body, and more than any of that, she had been there when Jet had first tried to give up his ghost.

She just wanted to be there for him while she still could.

Her words were the total opposite of her inner feelings. "I understand." She said quietly, looking the boy in the face, her eyes hard. The very way she looked at him seemed to be some kind of veiled attack. "I shouldn't let how I feel get in the way of what you need to do. Jet's tough, he should be able to pull through just fine, even if I am not there. In fact, I bet he'd prefer it this way."

Slowly, in the way that an innocent bystander reaches out to pet a wild animal, Shane extended his hand and tentatively grasped Virginia's. He really _did_ look sincere to her, and she felt bad about holding such abrupt negative feelings towards him, just because he had separated Jet from her. There _was_ a perfectly good reason for it. "I'm sure that he'd prefer to have you by his side." The youth soothed, the dark skin tone of his hand a contrast to Virginia's pristine white glove. "As soon as Grandmother says it's alright for him to have visitors, or, as soon as he asks for you, I'll come get you right away. Is that okay?"

The hurt look in Virginia's eyes had faded, now all that was left seemed to be tiredness, and within that, a sense of gratitude. She squeezed Shane's hand. "Thanks." She whispered, her throat feeling tight. "Come call me at any time. I don't mind."

"I'll do that." Shane replied, bowing respectfully to her. As he straightened up again, he let go of her hand. "I have to go. Grandmother will get upset if her assistant isn't around to hand her tools and things. She can be like that sometimes. You should go get some rest, you look tired. Gallows will let you all use our house." He turned to leave.

He was almost at the door when Virginia called out Shane's name, from seemingly a long distance away. It _felt_ like a hundred miles. "Shane!" She called, this time without a waver in her tone. She seemed to be in control again. "Take good care of him!"

The young Baskar priest tilted his head back and smiled at her, nodding once before opening the door and slipping inside. When the door slid to a close Virginia could see that a note had been tacked to the outside, written in esoteric Baskar hieroglyphs. Later on in the evening Gallows had told her what it had said over dinner, a hastily put together meal of maize and other vegetables. Virginia had hardly eaten a bite.

"It's… it's like a special prayer." He tried to say, rubbing his chin. It was hard for him to find the right english words in order to describe something so innately _Baskarian_. It lets everybody in the colony know that somebody of importance and virtue is in dire need, somebody like Jet. You gotta know that saving Jenny's life is an incredibly big thing. Why, if Granny were to kick the bucket tomorrow, Leo would be a popular candidate for Chieftain, other than Shane, 'o course. He's still a little too young for that kind of responsibility, though. Where was I?"

"The special prayer." Clive answered him, nursing a mug of beer.

"Right. Well, the prayer. It's bigger than a regular prayer. The whole colony will pray as one, for Jet. It's one of the ways we're going to repay him for risking his life like that, selflessly, even though he knew that he was sick. I talked to a few of my other buds, they all reckon what he did was pretty damn amazing." Gallows took a bite out of his food, chewing thoughtfully. "Who'da thunk it?"

Virginia had thought about it. She did not believe it, not that much. Jet had not rushed out to save Jenny just because she was a fair maiden in distress and the daughter of a major figure in the colony, that just wasn't him. The word 'virtue' had never really figured much into Jet's vocabulary. More likely, Jet had risked his life because that was what he had become used to doing. It was old habit. When that habit had begun to slip out of his hands and his last chance at grabbing it again had come up, he did not let it get away. The fact that this time his risk-taking would _certainly_ claim his life was a mere footnote in his scope of things.

Jet was such an _idiot_.

The grip on her glass of water tightened considerably. Idiot! She would write the words 'idiot' all over his grave. How could he have thrown himself to the wolves when he knew, he _knew_ that she loved him so? Was he _trying_ to leave her life in ruin?

She got a hold of herself quickly. Jet had not planned this. None of them had. He had acted in the only way he knew how, he had acted like a drifter. She was a drifter too, so she should have been able to understand. If Virginia had been in Jet's position, would she have done the same? Well, she admitted to herself that she probably would have, albeit in a more level-headed way. It all boiled down to something savagely simple; Jet had saved somebody, and now they were going to try and save _him_ in return.

She wondered how he was doing, if he was awake.

xxx

In the night Virginia dreamed of Jet.

It had been like that night three weeks ago, when Jet had tried to pull the three tall spears out of the ground with one hand, humming a faintly childlike tune. She had been sitting down on the council stone absent-mindedly brushing her long, chestnut hair. Instead of her drifting outfit she was wearing only her thin laced nightgown, apparel far too flimsy for a chilly Midland night. As if to remind her of this fact, a nippy wind attacked her side, causing her to fold her arms about herself and shiver.

Several yards before her, in the junction of pathway that led up to the council stone where Virginia was sitting, Jet was on his knees in the dewy grass, his legs splayed slightly beneath him. His left arm looked a little bruised from several hasty injections. He was wearing strange clothes, possibly something he had borrowed after he had lost most of his original set of clothing in the Zenom mountains. His head was bowed, perhaps in soft prayer for his own soul. She could almost catch some snippets of his verse.

"You can really have no notion of how delightful it will be, when they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea. But the snail replied 'Too far, too far!' and gave a look askance - said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance."

Virginia stood up, dropping her hairbrush onto the stone. She could hear Jet's words but they made absolutely no sense, like a kind of nonsensical poem. He was muttering it quickly and without hesitation, like the song was second-nature to him. Silver hair obscured his eyes, but below that, she could see that he was sporting a mad smile. "Jet…" Virginia breathed unsteadily, taking a step towards him. "What are you…"

Jet looked up. Eyes as milky white and as blind as cataracts peered up at her, the skin across his face bubbled and peeling, blackened underneath, like a rotting corpse. He was missing an ear, it must have been lost somewhere. His smile grew wider, revealing mossy teeth, most of which had fallen away long ago. Through a strangled throat Virginia squeaked and backed away, recoiling. Even still the creature continued to sing. Some of it came from his mouth, coarse and scratchy like papyrus from a millennia ago, a horrid snarl, but the rest was beamed directly into her head, where it could not be blocked out. It echoed within her skull, almost driving her insane.

"'What matters is how far we go?' His scaly friend replied,

_There is another shore, you know, upon the **other** side._

The further off from England, the nearer is to France -

_Then turn not pale, **beloved **snail, but come and join the dance!_

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?

_Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, **won't you join the dance!"**_

Somehow she knew that the poem held some meaning for her. Jet, this evil specter of Jet, it wanted to take her away to some far off place, _to dance to the other side. _Virginia screamed and edged away from him, her calves bumping into the stone behind her. Without thinking about it she fell upon the rock and began to slide backwards, pushing with the heels of her hands and her feet.

This ghoulish variation of Jet did not blink. It didn't have to, it was totally blind. And yet it could see her perfectly. Leaning forward, Jet fell onto his hands and knees like an animal and hacked out a gravelly, spiritual laugh. _"Something funny, honey? Don't you want to join the dance?"_

His legs were nothing but dead flesh beneath him. He started to crawl towards her, groping at the grass with bony skeletal hands, still with that mad smile on his face. "No!" Virginia screamed, blocking her sight away by covering up her eyes. She held her breath, absolutely sure that the ghoul would get her, for this was none other than the object of her deepest darkness nightmares. Her true hell. The hell of knowing that Jet was dead.

Nothing came.

When she opened her eyes again she got a face full of pillow. She leant away from it and sat up groggily, rubbing at her eyes. It was dark all around her and quite cold, still the middle of the night. She was wearing the nightgown she had worn within her dream. Elsewhere in the room, Clive and Gallows were silent in sleep.

Still half confused about her whereabouts and lightly soaked in a mixture of cold and fear sweat, Virginia looked towards the door on the floor below her, closed tightly to keep the warmer air inside. Her hair was a mess. If she were to go outside for a breath of fresh air, would she see Jet sitting all alone in the middle of the colony, wrapped in a set of Shane's old clothes, his head down and chanting, chanting that chilling song that filled her full of dread? She didn't want to find out.

Tears filled her eyes. "It can't be…" She whimpered, clutching the blankets tightly. "Jet can't be dying. Jet can't be… dead…"

But it was oh so _possible._

Holding her head in her hands, Virginia broke down and cried.


	9. Silent Comfort

Despite what she had seen in her terrifying dreams, it felt like this brand new day was going to be bereft of any activity with meaning. The door to the medicine house remained closed, save for the occasional doctor going to and fro, about his or her business. Sometimes they sported bowls filled with dirtied, tepid water, on one other time they had disposed of a stretch of linen that had been spotted with blood. The Maxwell Gang went along with the day as they had been accustomed to doing, but their thoughts always did not stray far from Jet's door.

Virginia had tried to block the thoughts of her nightmare and her worries of Jet from her mind. It was the only real way she could deal with them properly. She knew that her dream had been a personal fabrication, and untrue, for now, because Jet was still alive. She was confident that Shane would alert her the very minute that something went wrong. The brown-haired girl felt a deep sense of gratitude for the young Baskar priest, because his vigil over the one that Virginia loved saved her a great deal of worry and strength, so that she would be calm and rested for whenever Jet needed her the most. Virginia owed Shane a great deal of thanks.

If she stayed in the colony all she could do was wait. She didn't think that she could handle that. In the bright sunshine of the morning she tacked up her beautiful pale mare with bridle and saddle, hoping the fresh air and the quiet time would help to clear her head. The horse was grazing contentedly as Virginia gently adjusted the blanket underneath the leather saddle, serenely flicking an ear at a wayward insect that buzzed around her mane. Virginia petted the horse's neck thoughtfully, then placed both her hands onto the saddle, intending to mount her and set off.

"Um… excuse me? Miss Maxwell?" Said a voice from behind her, soft and timid, undeniably feminine. Virginia only had one foot in the stirrup when she was interrupted from what she was doing, so she let go of the horse's flank and turned around to greet whoever it was that was addressing her.

Jenny was fidgeting with her hands when Virginia looked upon her, staring at the ground at her feet. She had a bandage wrapped around her forehead, to keep the long cut across her face sterile. Most of her black hair seemed to be covering the wound through, which was good. If she chanced to develop a scar there, at least it would not normally be seen. It had been dark in the tunnels, so Virginia hadn't gotten a fair chance to look at her. She seemed particularly pretty, a child that a father like Leo would be proud of.

"It's Jenny, isn't it?" Virginia answered her, still with a hand upon the flank of her horse. "I remember you."

The girl nodded, abashed. "Yes, and you're one of the drifters that came to save me yesterday. Would it be alright if I had a word with you for a moment? Just for a little bit?" She pressed, looking hopeful.

Virginia had never been spoken to before with such meekness, or such a high regard. It felt strange to her, but it was also oddly interesting. _She_ had always been the young one, the one who had to ask politely for any help. Now this girl was doing the same thing to her. "What's the matter?" She asked the Baskar girl. "Is something wrong?"

"Not particularly, but I…" Jenny noticed the lightly laden and tacked-up horse beside the older girl. She leant to the side a little and looked at it owlishly. The rest of her reply changed its shape. "…Are you going somewhere?"

The brown-haired girl nodded towards her waiting mount. "Just for a little bit of a walk, or a ride, whatever it is you'd call it. I need a bit of time to clear my head, and Stybba here could do with the exercise. She's starting to get all roly-poly from staying in this colony for so long." She smiled brightly. "I think everybody here is beginning to spoil her."

"Stybba…" Jenny echoed, reaching out a hand to the animal. "Can I pat her?"

"Sure, she won't bite." Virginia answered, stepping aside. Jenny obediently walked up to the horse's face and carefully patted the creature's nose, her stance suggesting that if the horse were to make the slightest sudden move, Jenny would already have run a considerable distance away. In the beginning the horse's ears were set forward rigidly, listening to every motion that the girl made, but when the animal came to the conclusion that the girl was not a threat to her, Stybba relaxed, her mind beginning to wander in the ways that a horse's mind usually does.

"Are you going into the highlands?" Said the Baskar girl, her initial meekness towards Virginia beginning to fade a little. She began to giggle when the white mare started to sniff her front, in the hopes that she had an apple or a carrot hidden in one of the pockets of her clothing. Jenny gently nudged the searching nose away.

In all actuality, Virginia had planned to run Stybba along at a gallop until she was a considerable distance away from the colony, perhaps towards the beach that ran closely to the edge of the Zenom mountains, where she would stay and spend a few hours looking over the distant sea of sand in reflection. It would be a perfect place to contemplate all that was to come. But now, the thought of being alone seemed unbearable to Virginia, even for a short amount of time. She searched within herself for a moment and then spoke. "Yeah, that's where I was thinking of going." She lied softly. "It must be nice and quiet up there, away from everything else."

Jenny looked up at her knowingly. She shook her head. "But it's _not_ quiet up there, not in any real sense of the word. The mountains are bursting with life and activity, always moving, always with its own pulse and beat. I guess sometimes you won't hear things, but there'll always be life up there. Say!" She clapped her hands together in delight. "I know! Have you seen _Serenitatis_ before?"

When Virginia first heard that name, it sounded like some kind of disease to her. Wait, wasn't it the name of a place far, far away? Jenny's bright and happy expression on her face made it seem like it was something else. Virginia folded her hands in expectation. "I'm not quite sure what that is." She admitted. "What is it? A place?"

"Yes, a very special place." Jenny conceded, looking in the general direction of the northern mountains. When night came, the mountains' shadow loomed over Baskar like a protecting veil. Perhaps there was something up there greater than just a mass of land? The Baskar girl brushed hair out of her eyes, revealing the long length of bandage that covered a strip of her face. It was pinned back with a safety pin. "_Serenitatis _is special. I go there whenever I need guidance in my life. It's a small mesa about halfway up the northern mountains." Jenny paused, then asked the question that had been sitting in the front of her mind. "…Would you like to see it?"

Virginia's brow furrowed slightly. It was obvious that her life was in an upheaval these days, but she had tried to keep that information under wraps. Did she really look that desperately in need of advice? No, perhaps she was looking into Jenny's actions far too deeply. The girl merely wanted to repay her for her help in the tunnels, for the hand she had played in her rescue. And she knew, she _was_ in dire need. The fact that she wanted to ride for hours and then cry all alone on an abandoned beach somewhere was proof of that.

The young Baskar girl seemed to be an empathetic person at heart. Maybe that was what endeared her to people, and possibly brought within Jet the conviction to save her life. What did she have to lose? Besides, _Serenitatis_ sounded like an interesting place to visit.

"Can you ride a horse?" Virginia asked, needing that information first.

Jenny's answer was simple. "Any Baskar can ride a horse."

"Good. Then show me what this _Serenitatis_ place is all about."

xxx

Double mounted, Virginia's white mare easily trotted up the rising foundation of the mesas above the colony, taking a small scenic path that Jenny had pointed out, leading towards the lower, sensible plateaus. The air was fresher up there, more _wild_, more free. Virginia held the reins casually and felt the touch of the wind upon her cheek, a caress that was definitely welcomed. She could see the colony far below her horse's moving hooves, a small scattering of tents and more solid foundations, but they looked so far away now, appearing to be the size of a collection of little doll houses. Her problems were down there as well, but they too seemed oddly, guiltily distant.

Jet was down there somewhere, in one of those tiny doll houses, suffering. Dying. A look of pain flitted across Virginia's face for a moment and then was gone. Thinking about that now, especially when she was attempting to take her mind off things was a self destructive path. He would suffer the exact same amount whether she tortured herself over it or not. Virginia ripped her gaze and thoughts from the sight of the colony below her, trying to get away from the negative thoughts that it held. As she did this, she took note of a small little bird alighting on a tree just ahead of her, its light blue feathers a contrast to the faded green leaves around it.

A migratory bird of the wastelands. So tiny, and yet, so free. Virginia gently pulled on the reins of her mount, easing the horse to a stop. The horse did as it was told, snorting slightly. That bird, it was what Virginia had modeled her life on, the urge and the desire to be free. She watched the animal preen happily and then chirp out a small semblance of a song. Jenny looked over Virginia's shoulder, wondering why they had stopped moving. "What is it?" The girl asked, peering around. "Is there something on the road?"

She was a drifter, as free as a bird. But like Jet she had found herself tied down to something material, something holding her in stasis. It was not something as solid as the stable environment had been to Jet, but it had been Jet himself who had frozen her own personal wandering. It would not be too farfetched a notion for Virginia to say that her life now revolved around Jet and his illness. The number one unspoken rule of drifting stated that a drifter must never form immobilizing bonds to another, unless that person was willing to go along with the drifter's flow of transience. Jet had been a willing soul, that is, until he started to die.

What was she to do now? Anyone who was too wounded, too grounded, you had to leave them behind. Otherwise, you would end up just as grounded and as lost as they were. Jet had fallen, had his wings broken, was Virginia willing to experience the same just to stay close to him? Did Jet mean that much to her that Virginia was loosening her grip on the ideals that she held at the very core of her being? It seemed like it.

"Miss Maxwell? Why did we stop?" Jenny asked from behind her, letting go of Virginia's waist. The drifter leader blinked once, snapping out of her reverie at the same moment as the small bird took flight again, flapping its little wings hard enough to launch itself into the sky. It was gone.

"Huh?" Virginia grunted softly before getting her mind back into proper order. She turned her head a little so that she could see Jenny slightly. "Oh, I'm sorry. A thought kind of grabbed ahold of me and I forgot to think about anything else. Let's go on, shall we?" Making a slight clicking noise in the corner of her mouth, Virginia gently nudged her horse in the side and prompted it to continue onwards, along the track.

Jenny grabbed Virginia's waist again, not wanting to fall off. She was unused to riding a horse wearing a saddle and a bridle, because Baskar were noted for their skill at bareback riding. Jenny hadn't done much of either, bare or otherwise, but she did notice how much more comfortable the saddle seemed to make the ride, though it felt a little odd beneath her legs. It helped that the saddle elevated her from the horse's bony spine, which would dig painfully into her crotch or inner thighs if she rode bareback for any longer than ten minutes. "What were you thinking about?" She asked, leaning forward a little, curious.

"I'll tell you about it once we get to the mesa you were talking about." Virginia replied after a slight pause, looking this way and that to see if she could spot where this curving path was taking them. She hoped that it wasn't too far away, and that they would have enough time to look around the area and chat, while getting back to the colony by about mid afternoon. Maybe the doctors would allow Jet to have visitors by then.

"Okay." Jenny agreed, smiling. "And I will tell you what I wished to speak to you about before. As for _Serenitatis,_ it's probably another hours' trot until the mesa. If your horse starts to get thirsty, I think there's a little stream along the way. You can't miss it, it has eroded a great section of the earth away."

"It must rain a lot up there, then." Virginia guessed, figuring that the huge earth formations must act like a huge wall between the northern peninsula and the rest of Midland, locking the dry weather in and the damp weather out. Not only would the view from the very top be a spectacular sight to see, but it would be like standing on the battlements of a gigantic fortified keep, under siege by the elements themselves. The top was too far away however, but the place that Jenny was leading them to would be just fine.

For the next hour they rode in amused silence. The scenery was enough to pique their interest and keep them entertained, for even as they slowly twisted up and crested each small rise in the mountainous plains, the flora and fauna began to decrease in number. Whatever small examples of plant or animal life were beautiful and fuller in that elevated place, Virginia spotting on one brief occasion a family of small deer, a doe and her two little children. They were probably making their way towards the stream as well. The two girls ducked in their saddle as the horse wandered beneath a bottle brush tree that leant out onto the pathway, its bright golden blooms and waxy green leaves humming with the activity of hundreds of honey bees. They were creating the first lot of wild honey for the season.

When they reached the tiny sloping riverbed the stream seemed to be more than half dried up, but there still just enough water left for Virginia's thirsty mare to stick her nose into the cool refreshing water and take a drink. The liquid was as clear as crystal, practically undisturbed. The girls could see small, egg-shaped pebbles scattered along the bottom of the riverbed, formed into those shapes during times when the stream had been larger and much rougher.

They could no longer see Baskar colony on the stretch of flatlands far below the hills. Jenny's path had taken them inwards to the plains, as well as upwards. As Virginia guided her mount away from the stream, tugging persistently on the reins when it seemed like the horse was going to put its head down and graze, she wondered if anybody else lived up here, in the wilderness. The path they were on looked old and beaten, well used. Who else traveled this way?

The horse could nibble on grass later on, once they got to their destination. The next half hour went by rather uneventfully, except for one small instance in which Virginia could have sworn that she saw a mountain lion slinking by in the undergrowth, causing the hairs on the back of her neck to rise uncomfortably. She kept one hand on the embroidered surface of one of her holsters until the prickly feeling went away.

Jenny was right. There _was_ an incredible amount of life up here in the mountains. Not monsters, the creatures that existed far below on the level playing field of life, but animals and plants, innocent creatures, spirits of life. The entire northern mountains, they almost felt… _sacred_.

The young Baskar girl lithely slipped off the white horse and ran forward a little, climbing the next mesa slope. There was a longer, less steep path a little further ahead, one that would be easier for Stybba to climb across. Jenny let out a little cry of delight. "We're here!" She called, standing on earth that was higher than Virginia could see over, from her vantage point. "Oh my! It's just as I remember it!"

"Jenny, what does _Serenitatis _mean?" Virginia asked, navigating her mount up the slope, watching the younger girl's long black hair sway in the breeze. She was surveying something with infinite delight.

She turned around and smiled modestly. "_Serenitatis_ got its name from my great many times grandmother, who discovered this place a very long time ago. Its location is known only to my family. Not even the Elder of Baskar knows about it, but I guess if Papa becomes the next Chieftain, they will. It's named after a place of utter calmness, meaning _sea of serenity._ It's where I go when I need an answer." The calmness left her voice and now she just looked excited. "Come and see!"

Virginia hopped off the horse herself and led it the rest of the way by hand. She was greeted by the amazing, unbearable blue sky, the clouds above like puffs of the purest dairy cream. The place was like a huge balcony attached to the side of the larger mountains, overlooking the whole of Midland. She could literally see for miles and miles around.

The environment almost seemed to be _enhanced_ by a magical power. It was like a veil had constantly been laid across of all of Virginia's vision, and only now, when she stood upon this hallowed place, it had fallen away to reveal _real_ colours, _real_ atmosphere, real _life_.

The entire ground beneath her was moving. _Serenitatis_ was a field of grass stalks swaying in the wind, long thin stems with a silky white puff of cotton-like down upon the tips. There were thousands of them, all moving to their rhythm and beat, the songs of the wind. In the middle of the mesa the grass was bright green and normal, perfect for a small group of people to sit down on without their noses being tickled by the puffs of white grass. A large monolith was stood in the very epicenter, ancient and mossy, wreathed in an aura of mystery.

"It's so… beautiful…" Virginia breathed, making her way through the field of grass stalks and absent-mindedly leading her horse behind her. She was glad that she was wearing stocking underneath her dress, otherwise the grass would have tickled her almost to death. She let go of Stybba and the mare calmly made her way towards the shorter, sweeter grass, grazing upon it with gratitude.

"You should see it at night." Jenny stated eagerly. "_Then_ its _really_ beautiful! One day I hope to bring my betrothed up here, sometime during the full moon." She clasped her hands together and sighed dreamily.

"Your betrothed?" Virginia asked, looking towards her younger friend. She only looked to be no more than thirteen years old, and she was pretty, mind you, but not old enough to be considering something like marriage.

"Oh yeah, I forgot. You are not of Baskar blood, are you? Sorry." The dark-haired girl smiled, embarrassed. "When you're a girl in the Baskar tribe, you are married off as soon as you come of age. Boys go through the coming of age ceremony when they're eighteen years old, but for girls, we don't have to wait as long. It happens to us when we're thirteen. I turned thirteen two weeks ago, and to be truthful, the reason Papa came back to Baskar was for me to go through my coming of age ceremony. Do you find it… strange?" Jenny pressed, looking upon Virginia, her eyes searching.

"Well, yeah. I admit that it is kind of strange to me." Confessed the drifter, lightly rubbing the back of her neck. She had been taken care of very well throughout her life, as the daughter of Werner Maxwell, but after she had turned eighteen, she had been free to do what she chose. The idea of being set free at such a tender age appeared quite daunting to her, especially if Jenny was to still be tied down to the actions of her father afterwards. It seemed to be like a false freedom. "Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?" She added.

"Partly." Came the quiet answer. Jenny took a seat upon the grassy ground and motioned for Virginia to do the same. Sitting down in front of the monolith felt a little disconcerting to the girl, it gave her the feeling that she was being watched. The Baskar girl began to explain her woes. "I've always known that when the time came, Papa would decide who my life's partner would be by himself, just as my mother's father did for her. I've always been alright with that, because I trust my Papa's judgement. I think that's the ultimate form of trust, next to trusting another with your life. In a way I _am_ trusting him with my life."

"Is it scary for you?"

"Not at all." Jenny shook her head, and then looked up at Virginia again, from when she had previously been talking and twirling a severed stalk of grass between two fingers. "Miss Maxwell-"

"Virginia." She interrupted.

Jenny acknowledged that with a slight twitch of the corner of her mouth. "…Virginia. I don't believe in love at first sight. I don't believe in it at all. Love is not a solid unyielding thing like a rock, unchangeable, there or not. Love is like a seedling, tiny in the beginning, but it grows larger and stronger as it is taken care of and nurtured. That's why I never minded an arranged marriage, because whomever my Papa would choose for me, I felt that love would grow like seed planted in fertile earth. But now, something has changed and I am unhappy."

Virginia had a small inkling on where this was going. She already partly understood. "You've fallen in love outside of your own free will. Is that what you're saying? Now you feel that you'll be unhappy no matter who you father picks for you, because you won't be able to stop thinking about the other person?"

"Yes." Jenny squeaked sadly, "And I feel terrible for it. So very terrible… because…"

The brown-haired girl gently reached out and took hold of the younger girl's hand, which had been resting half curled in her lap. Jenny looked at Virginia in confusion. There was nothing but kindness written on Virginia's face. "Because it's Jet, isn't it? You've fallen in love with Jet, haven't you?" The girl started to pull away from Virginia now, but she held on firmly, resolutely.

"It's true. I love Jet." The Baskar girl sighed, defeated. "I'm sorry. He saved my life. I can't help but feel this way for him."

Letting go, Virginia leant back and placed both her hands on the ground behind her, lifting her head back to look at the sky. She didn't seem to be upset, just peaceful and meditative. After almost a minute's worth of silence, she spoke. "I'm not mad at you." She said, surprising the younger girl. "You feel bad about this, bad enough that you had to come talk to me. I'm sure you wouldn't do anything to pull me away from him. This has gotta be tough for you, knowing that Jet is dying. I certainly know how _that_ feels."

"It _is_ tough." Jenny emphasized, bringing a hand to her face. "It's just so awful…" A muffled sob escaped her, the girl beginning to cry. Without really thinking too hard, Virginia got up onto her knees and hugged the crying girl, trying to calm her down. Jenny was just like herself, somebody in the midst of despair because of the suffering of another. She liked Jenny very much as well and hated the idea that her own sadness was being emulated in the heart of somebody younger than her and not hardened to the cruelties of life. She had to be strong now, not just for Jet, but for Jenny as well.

"I know…" Virginia whispered, patting her friend on the back. "Trust me, I _know_."

She hugged the crying girl until she was silent, and felt, somewhere deep down inside her soul, that she was hugging a younger and weaker version of herself.

It put a lot of everything into perspective.

xxx

When they got back to Baskar Colony, both girls felt exceedingly drained, both physically and mentally. But a bond had formed between them, as two people, sisters, perhaps, who understood the pain of the other. It was a large burden off each other's minds. _Serenitatis _had blessed upon them both a clarity of mind. The tears, the nightmares, the thought of Jet alone in his deathbed, they were necessary evils in order for Virginia's mind to view the worst parts of reality and then recover. As they rode into the colony again, Virginia stole a look at the northern mountains above them, thinking on that place of hurtful peace and how it had helped her mind, and unburdened Jenny's conscience.

She spotted Clive and Gallows standing outside of the medicine house, where Jet was being treated. Without a heartbeat of indecision, she changed her direction and rode Stybba up to her two friends, getting a slight tingle of unpleasantness running down her spine. They were both talking to Shane, who was standing outside of the door.

Jenny tilted her face forward so that her forehead was resting upon the small of Virginia's back. She had been crying steadily for a long time now, not as badly as before, but still her eyes were a little red and sore. "What's going on?" She whispered.

Virginia answered as she dismounted her horse, unsure of whether she should be pleased or on edge. "I'm not sure. Wait here while I take a look. Shane!" She raised a hand and ran towards the others, lightly elbowing Clive away. "Are we allowed now? Can we see Jet?" She dared to ask.

The youth turned to her and sighed in relief. "Thank the Guardians you have returned! I have been trying to keep these two outside for close to an hour now, because I promised that you'd all have to be here at all once in order for you to go and see him. He wants to see all of you."

The drifter leader gasped and covered her mouth with a white-gloved hand. "Jet! Is he alright? How is he?"

"Well, he is conscious and coherent, so that's good." Shane smiled, looking a little pleased. But Virginia had the weirdest sensation of knowing that Shane was smiling with his mouth only. "He's actually been awake for awhile now, but we had to give him his treatments and explain to him…" He searched for a softer word to use. "…His condition. Jet's so stubborn, he tried to break the arm of a doctor who gave him his first sedative."

Virginia's laugh sounded a little more hysterical than she wanted it to be. She was just so _relieved_. "That sounds like Jet all right!" She cried.

Shane looked at her almost piteously. "But there's a few things you need to know about him, first. He's lost a great deal of hearing in one of his ears and his circulation is not too good at the moment. As such, he has trouble standing and walking. Please make sure he stays in bed, all right?"

Adjusting his glasses, Clive nodded grimly. "I shall make sure he does."

"Thank you." Shane replied, bowing a little. He was grateful for that. "Also, don't startle him. His heart is extremely fragile. Other than that… he is Jet, as you all may remember him. You may go see him now." As the three members of the Maxwell Gang moved towards the door at exactly the same time, instead of moving away obligingly, Shane stuck both his arms out and remained wedged into the doorway, obstinately staying there.

"Hey, Shane! What gives?" Gallows asked, wondering if he should remove Shane by force or not. He had been out here for a whole hour now, just waiting. He wanted to go in, now that Virginia was there with him. He didn't want to start by getting ticked off at his younger sibling.

"I'm sorry." Shane continued from his place in the doorframe, lowering his arms. "Jet _does_ want to talk to all of you, but he's asked that you'd come and see him _one at a time_. Otherwise, you might overcrowd him. Do you understand?"

The way Shane said the word 'understand' was like a beacon of black light in Virginia's mind. It was only now that she considered that Shane was allowing visitors not because Jet was getting better, but because Jet was getting _worse_. Because it was getting so very close for that time, the time. The _last_ time.

She was now sure of it.

Jet was getting ready to say his final good-byes.


	10. Gallows, Inner Vision

(A/N: Woo, this fic now has one thousand hits on it! I suppose that means you really are enjoying the fic, huh? I give my thanks to everybody who decided to read this far, whether you reviewed or not. Good criticism is what I crave, you know. Lots of love and hugs and free pie for all!)

It was too warm inside, that was what it felt like, and what Gallows initially thought. The hearth was burning steadily even though it had not yet descended into night, a small circular pit of flame and smoking embers existing in the center of the moderately sized medicine house. It felt hot and strangely dark in here, as all the windows were drawn closed and the only true source of light came from the small hole in the roof, used to let all the smoke from the hearth outside. A table covered in medical tools took up one of the corners of the room, while a shelf or two of magical books and journals held residence on the other side.

This was not an unfamiliar place to Gallows. He had started his apprenticeship as a Baskar priest right here in this very room, many years ago, when he was just a young lad scarcely eleven years old. He had not been a very bright or a diligent student when it came to things like historical study and prayer, but he _did_ have a quick mind and good reflexes, which made him the perfect medical acolyte. Many an afternoon, evening or morning he had spent in this house, assisting those who tended to the sick. That was Shane's job now, he believed.

There were three beds in the medicine house. Two of them were neatly made and fresh, the blankets folded carefully and placed upon the foot of the bed, the flatweed mesh mattress visible to the naked eye. The pillows were soft goosefeather, plucked from game birds during the hunting seasons. Jet was in the other bed, woven blankets of several different ochre colours covering up his body. They were of an earthy, intricate design.

Jet himself was staring into the fire. He was sitting up and his hands were folded in his lap, looking small and childlike in contrast to the large blankets on the bed. There was something about the way that Jet was focussing his gaze on the fire that suggested to Gallows an alert mind was present, possibly one that was _too_ alert. It seemed like Jet was ignoring everything around him, unbearably conscious of his surroundings. The boy was wearing a plain, clean white shirt and a bandage was wrapped around one of his upper arms a little, the smallest traces of blue bruising creeping out from beneath the fabric. His hair was mussed up from a long, long sleep.

Gallows stood with his back to the closed front door and scratched the back of his head thoughtfully. What was he going to say to him? He didn't have a clue. He had been ushered in here as the first one to see Jet after his second heart attack, and though Shane had said Jet was conscious and coherent, he was acting in a way that was befitting of a vegetable. Didn't he hear him coming inside? Wait, hadn't Jet asked for him in the very first place?

"Um…" Gallows began, stepping forward a few paces and blocking Jet's view of the fire. He saw a slight flicker of something in Jet's eyes as the boy's thoughts were disturbed, along with his view. The Baskar priest had always gotten his best responses out of people by playing to who they were, and in Jet's case, he was an exceptionally witty youth. "Hey there, kid. How are you feeling?" Gallows crouched down a little, so that he could look into Jet's downcast eyes. He cocked his head comically, still searching for that initial response.

Something connected. Slowly, Jet met his older comrade's gaze. His pale lips curved into a satirical smile. "Gallows…" Jet breathed, looking behind the Baskar rather than directly at him, as if his eyes refused to focus properly, "If you bend over near the hearth like that, your ass is gonna catch fire."

Gallows snapped up to attention immediately. He actually _did_ feel a little bit of too much warmness on his derriere. "Oh Fengalon, you're right! Ouch…" Righting himself, he patted his own butt experimentally, making sure nothing had charred. It all seemed to be alright.

"When are you ever gonna grow up?" Jet scolded, looking annoyed. Whatever he had been thinking about before, the strangely faraway look he had been giving the fire was no longer visible on his face.

The older man rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Sorry. I guess I'm always going to be like this."

Jet looked at him strangely, confused. "What? Who are you going to kiss? I can't hear you, you're standing on the wrong side of the bed." He pointed to a stool positioned on the other side firmly. "Stand there. All I can hear is mumbling."

Oh yeah, Shane had mentioned something like that. Jet had lost a great deal of his hearing in the tunnels, so what he could hear and not hear depended on what side he was on. One of his ears was working better than the other. Gallows obligingly moved towards the stool and sat down, resting his hands on his knees. "Is this better? How'd you lose your hearing?" He asked curiously, prepared to give up the issue if Jet didn't want to talk about it. He didn't know if the question was taboo or not. With Jet, everything was trial and error, especially in conversation.

The drifter was also strangely willing to engage in conversation today. Usually Jet didn't like to talk at all. Jet lightly scratched behind one of his ears. "Yeah, I can hear you now." He stated, nodding. "I think it was because of that mosquito monster, the damn thing busted one of my eardrums when I was getting close to it. It wasn't because I am… you know…"

"Rotten luck?"

"'Think so."

Gallows shifted uncomfortably. What was there to talk about except for Jet's condition? But it was a depressing subject, probably one that Jet wouldn't want to hear. He tried to think of something lighthearted and cheery to say, but his mind was blocked up with indecision. The Baskar priest always tried to be an optimist when the chips were down, but what could possibly be optimistic about what Jet was going through? Finally he just decided to continue on at the pace he was going at. "Shane said you can't walk or stand." He stated, tonelessly.

"That's right." Jet agreed, with neither a positive or negative swing to his voice. He was just stating a fact. The silver-haired boy leant forward a little and ran his hand down along the shape of one of his legs, under the blankets of the bed. "My heart isn't working hard enough to get enough blood throughout my whole body. The doctors say it's compensating for that by only keeping the necessary parts of my body alive. If I want to stand up, I need a crutch, an' if I want to go anyplace, I'd either need someone to carry me or use a wheelchair."

"How does it feel?" Gallows found himself asking Jet, regardless if the question was tactful or not.

"'Doesn't feel like anything." Jet replied, shrugging. "How am I supposed to feel? There's nothing I can do about it. I really want to go outside, out the back or something like that, but like this I can't even stand up, and the doctors won't let me out of bed. It's too hot in here."

The Baskar priest smiled. "That's as bad as house arrest. If you want to go outside, I could always carry you there."

Jet had tried to hide his look of hope. "Just for a little while?"

"You're sick. I dunno if you know about this or not, but sick people _always_ get what they want. Ice-cream and jello too, but maybe that can wait for later. How does a couple of minutes outside sound?"

"It sounds great, actually."

Jet pulled back his blanket and grunted a little as he set both hands on the mattress and tried to lever himself up with his arms, a small frown of dismay on his face. But Gallows had dealt with people with paralysis before and leant over his friend, wrapping one arm behind Jet's back with the other arm going under Jet's knees. With this, his center of balance was perfectly proportioned and he effortlessly lifted Jet off the bed. The young drifter was so light, there was practically nothing to it. Vaguely he recalled the warning Shane had given him about Jet staying in his bed, but damn, this was what Jet _wanted_, and denying a dying man of his wishes at a time like this just seemed beyond sinful.

If Gallows was caught out, then it would be Jet's fault. Gallows was satisfied with that. As he straightened up again he shifted the boy in his arms, favoring his right arm so that Jet would be better secure. He leant against Gallows' chest and reached a hand out to grasp a fold of the big Baskar's vest, making sure he was safe. The silver-haired youth glared at his friend evenly. "If you drop me there'll be hell to pay." He warned, a tone of venom falling from his tongue. "I'll slash your ankles."

"Is it _really_ true that you can't feel anything in your legs?" Gallows ventured, daring a question as he carried Jet to the back door. "None at all?"

"Most of the time, I guess so." Jet replied, removing his hand from Gallows' vest in order to manipulate the doorknob, as his friend at the moment did not have a hand to spare. He leant down a bit to do so, wincing a little from a hidden pain. "But there are some times when I _do_ feel stuff, but all it is are sensations of hurting. I'd rather just feel nothing at all." An awkward pause, in which Jet turned the handle on the door and added in thought; "I miss walking. The doctors here treat me like a fucking mentally challenged baby."

Turning on his side slightly, Gallows nudged the door open with one shoulder. Cooler afternoon air wafted in and met with the warmer, gloomier atmosphere. The Baskar priest blew slightly at the lock of white hair in front of his face, trying to get it out of the way. "They just want you to be comfortable." Gallows defended, his initial unease at speaking with Jet again melting away as time went by. "They've probably never dealt with anybody like you before, especially someone who looks and acts like a young adult, is really only the age of a child, and is suffering from an old man disease. You're pretty much unique, Jet."

"Yeah, but I still wish I could walk." Jet grumbled as Gallows brought him outside, but then he looked up and grinned when he realised where he was. "Voila! The great outdoors! I thought I would never get to see it again." He admitted with a strange kind of satisfaction , then he put his hand over his mouth. "Oh shit, I shouldn't talk so loudly. Clive and Virginia are out the front, aren't they? They might hear me. It's goddamned difficult to talk right when you can't hear yourself properly."

"I pretty much think you're safe." Said Gallows, kicking the door closed in order to keep the heat in. "Where should I put you down? Or would you rather me keep on holdin' you? It's not a problem."

The drifter looked around a bit. There were barrels and ceramic pots lined up outside the back of the medicine house, some covered with a fold of cloth or a lid to keep the freshness of the items inside intact. There was also a pile of freshly cut firewood too, a project that had been undertaken by Gallows and Jet himself. Had that only been two days ago? It felt like forever and a day. A particularly clean patch of ground was reserved for nobody, or somebody had removed the supplies from there the day before. Jet pointed to it. "Down there's good." He stated decisively. "Put me down."

Gallows obeyed him, dropping to one knee and laying Jet up against the side of the house. There was enough room for two, so the Baskar scooted over as well and sat down beside his friend, draping a hand over one arched leg. Jet leant his head back and sighed deeply. "God, that's better. I felt like I was gonna suffocate in there."

"Don't tell Shane I let you out here." Gallows muttered quietly, keeping one eye on Jet. "He'd tattle on me as quick as a flash, and I dunno, Granny might decide to give me a caning. I wouldn't put it past her. Hey… are you listening?" His words had changed course when he noticed that Jet no longer seemed to be paying any attention to him, he was looking at his hand in the grass. "How do you feel?"

"I won't tell anybody." Jet promised, halfheartedly running the palm of his hand over the patch of prickly, short clipped grass. He was staring at it with an expression more kindly than any he would turn upon a fellow human being. "It'd be like one of those so called existential things. Once nobody remembers it, it'll no longer exist." He started to pluck small strands of grass from the ground. "If you forget about it, the truth'll die with me."

"Existenti-what?" Gallows appeared to be confused.

Jet smirked at him. "One of those tree-falling-in-the-forest kind of things. You've never really thought about it, have you?" For a moment the boy almost looked dismayed at this, disappointed, but he must have decided something secret in his mind and his attitude became secure again. Jet rested both of his hands on his lifeless legs and shot out a rather bold question directly at his friend. "You're a priest, so do me a favor. Can you tell me about God?"

This took Gallows completely aback. He sat up straight immediately and raised an eyebrow. "What God? Which God?" He had always pinned Jet as the last person in the world who cared about religion or anything like that. Jet was regarding him steadily, expecting a proper answer. Gallows raised a hand in protest. "Listen, I'm a _Baskar_ priest, and my people worship a great many different gods, the Guardians, you must know that by now. I can really only tell you about them, and even so, I never really understood much of what they taught me to-"

"Tch, that's not what I'm talking about. I don't wanna know about what the Baskars think about gods and all that crap, I want to know what Gallows the fucking priest who's gonna bury me thinks about it! Why else would I ask just you and not one of the doctors back in that house, who obviously have three times the IQ that you do?" Jet snarled, anger in his eyes. There was fear in them as well.

Gallows had calmed down a little, mostly because the shock of hearing Jet's words had settled inwards by now. He sighed, looking at the ground. Jet was still expecting him to say something. "You really want to know what I think?" He asked softly. "And… you really want me to be the one to bury you? That's sickening, you sure you want that? There are better priests in this village than I. Really."

"I _do_ want to know what you think." Jet stressed powerfully. "The only opinions I can find value in are the opinions of the people I really _know_ and _trust_. People who I've defended in combat, and in turn defended me." He laughed a little. "It sounds so moronically noble when I say it out loud, but that's how I figure out if people are worth it or not. An' the other thing…" The drifter went quiet for a moment, thinking. "The same goes for that, too. I'd rather be buried by someone I trusted, rather than some uppity bastard waving a magic stick around. Gallows, you're the only priest I know and trust."

It seemed like Jet had formed a rather accurate perception of the other priests in the colony during his stay there. Gallows smiled and patted his friend on the shoulder, then leant closer towards him, in the telling of a secret. "Well then, listen up, Jet." Jet nodded and was all serious ears.

"We all know that Guardians are the foundation that supports the world. They _are_ gods in their own right, there's no doubt about that. They have earthly incarnations and can even be summoned into the physical world. But honestly, who made them? For there to be a proper foundation for the world, there had to first be a foreman. Something responsible for existence itself. I don't know what it was exactly, maybe the Guardians split from one huge entity, or were children or creations of one huge entity. I don't know. To be honest, I don't think that's the important part or even if we're _meant_ to know. What's the important part, to you? What do _you_ wanna know?"

Jet's voice was a mere whisper. "I want to know where I'm going to go when I die. Sometimes, lately, when I sleep, and I think even before that, I have visions of… something. I'm not sure what they are exactly, I always forget them right after I wake up."

"Is there anything at all you remember, any small little detail?" Gallows pressed, curious.

The boy put his hand against his chin. "Not really. It kind of felt like the whole vision was filled with _something_ I just couldn't describe in this world, so my mind made up some stuff in my dreams in order for it to make sense." Jet's hand slid up his face and pressed against his brow. "I remember… black sand. And maybe a tree. I think. No, maybe it was red sand. I just can't remember right."

"That's alright." Gallows replied kindly. He began to muse out loud, half talking to himself and half explaining things to Jet. "Maybe the afterlife _is_ a little bit like that. It could be whatever we wish it to be, like, the afterlife doesn't form around our souls, but our souls form around the afterlife? That's why everything seemed subjective to you? Damn, this is just too confusing for me. I wasn't made to think like this."

Looking away from Gallows now, Jet haphazardly reached over and pinched his upper leg hard, firmly enough to leave a bruise. It probably _would_ bruise up nicely, but the drifter did not feel a thing. It was like pinching somebody else, a feeling Jet would never ever get used to. "What is God to me, Gallows?" He finally asked, "And what the hell can He do for me?"

As Gallows got into it more, the role of counseling priest was becoming easier as he practiced it. He didn't know if he was speaking truth or just the dumb waffling of his own mind, but if it _did_ help Jet's frame of mind and make him feel better, it was time well spent. "It's not His business to do anything for you, I think. You need to take a bit of your own advice, the things you used to say way back when all of us just met. Do you remember what you used to say?"

Jet shook his head wretchedly. His voice was thick with emotion. "I don't remember much of anything anymore. I try, I really do _try_, but it's all shrouded in so much fog. It was so long ago. What did I say?"

Gallows was beginning to get pretty choked up with emotion himself. "Jet Enduro used to say that on this harsh world of ours, the only being you could have any real faith in was yourself. Don't believe in any kind of god or creature, any belief or gathering of people. You are the only person in the world who will _always_ trust you back. Being exempt from that is paradoxical."

Nodding, Jet looked to be satisfied. "'Sounds like something Jet Enduro would say. Except for that last part. You must have added it in yourself." He murmured, wrapping his arms about himself unexpectedly. He shivered. "It's cold. …Why is it so cold?"

The older man hadn't detected a change in temperature that he could feel. It was the same as it had been when they both had come out here, a nice and pleasant afternoon, not too hot and not too cold. He had been complaining of being too hot before, why had he suddenly just changed his mind? Gallows watched Jet huddle against the side of the medicine house, shrinking from some kind of frost that only he could feel.

Of course. That was it. The medicine house has been so overly heated for a reason. Jet's thermal temperature wasn't working properly by itself and needed coaxing to stay at the right level, hence the continuously burning hearth. Being too hot was better than being too cold, because hot things stayed _alive_. It was the lesser of two evils. "Come here." Gallows said as he reached out and picked up Jet again, pushing himself to his feet. He noted that Jet had resisted the urge to cuddle against him because of Gallows' warmth, so despite his problems, he still had an admirable amount of restraint still left in his body.

"In… side. No grass… Cold…" Jet rasped nonsensically, shaking his head.

"That's right, there's no grass inside. But that's okay, because its much warmer in there. You gotta go back to bed." Gallows agreed hoarsely and simplistically, hating himself for beginning to treat Jet like a 'mentally challenged baby', as he had complained of earlier.

"Fuck you… Gallows…"

The Baskar nearly laughed. Yes, Jet was still alive and kicking, somewhere inside the boy he was carrying. Gallows had left the back door open a small fraction in order for him to open it again without using the doorknob, so all he had to do was push it in with a toe and go inside. He did as planned, depositing the young drifter onto the bed. Afterwards, he strode back to the door and closed it firmly. Hopefully Jet would animate soon enough, now.

He remembered a time when he had only been a young child himself, when his little brother Shane had developed a cold-related breathing problem sometime late in the night, and he had sat up until the early hours of the morning with his mother, who had held the small toddler in her arms a safe distance away from a boiling pot of water, the steam from the pot relaxing Shane's constricted air passages. It had been one of the few memories he had left of his deceased mother. This problem with Jet right now reminded him a little of that night, many years ago.

Gallows sat down on the small stool, placed by the side of the bed where Jet could hear him best. Talking to him from the wrong side of the bed would be pointless, as he would not be able to hear him. "Is that better?" He asked cautiously. "It's much warmer in here, right?"

"Yeah…" Jet answered, looking up at him from where he lay on the bed. He looked a little pale, but then again, Jet _always_ looked a little pale. "Guess you should've listened to Shane, huh?"

"Oh yeah, it's all _my_ fault, isn't it?" Gallows smiled, reaching over and covering Jet up with the blanket again. "If you don't tell Shane that I took you out into the cool air, then _I_ wont tell him that it was all your idea in the first place."

"That seems fair." Jet concurred, getting his composure back a little. The look on his face suggested that he had a question he wanted to ask, but was still mulling over whether or not he should mention it to his friend. He decided there was no serious harm. "…Would you believe that I _knew_ that was going to happen? But I just really wanted to see the sky and the grass and stuff outside. I guess I knew you wouldn't let me get too bad before you brought me back in here. I think it was worth it."

"You really trust me that much?" Gallows wondered, just a little bit incredulous.

"About as far as Zephyr can throw you." Jet reassured him, tilting his head to the side and pressing his cheek against the soft downy pillow. He closed his eyes. "Hey Gallows, all this talking is making me tired. Do you reckon you could let Clive in after about an hour, so I can take a nap now or somethin'?"

So Jet was tiring and was now asking Gallows to leave. That was alright, because he needed his strength in order to speak to the others. Gallows couldn't just hog Jet's time for himself. He nodded solemnly. "Sure. I'll do that. But one last thing." The Baskar ran a nervous hand through his long brown hair. "Did I… was I of any use to you, really?"

"They say you should talk to a priest right before you die." Jet explained softly, from a land seemingly far away. "So that's what I decided to do. I just need to know that wherever I go, Gallows will always be Gallows. You're never gonna grow up. No matter where I end up after all is said and done, I can at least know that Gallows will be somewhere on Filgaia, chatting up women and saying dumb shit. That's the way it's going to be, right?"

Gallows' eyes threatened to fill with tears. He wasn't one to cry over sentimental stuff, especially when Jet was involved, but it really _did_ feel like Jet was saying goodbye. "I reckon so." He whispered, taking Jet's hand that was lying outside of the blankets. The drifter gave his hand a hard squeeze. He still had a pretty firm grip, even now. "I'll be doin' all that, and I'll be knowing that Jet's gone off on one of his solo adventures. Listen, I don't know much of anything about who or what the heck God is, but if what we're led to believe is true, the Guardians and God loves you, Jet. They really do."

"And you're gonna bury me, at the end?"

The priest smiled sympathetically. "We can't let some guy with a magic stick do it, can we?"

Jet laughed. "Thanks." He said, rolling over onto his side. "Now piss off and let me get some sleep. Make sure Clive is here in an hour." He paused, thinking, then spoke again. "It was good talking with you."

Gallows rose to leave. He was biting the inside of his lip hard. "See you tomorrow." He pledged firmly, the words sounding more like a demand than a farewell. As he left the medicine house, closing the door behind him, all Jet did was faintly mimic the words of his friend, softly.

"Yeah… tomorrow." He said.


	11. Clive, Forever Young

(A/N: This chapter wasn't written so much as it was gouged out of the ether that it came from. I've come to realise that Clive is a hard character to write when he's not the main character. Phew. Chapter title is from an Alphaville song I was listening to when I wrote it. It kind of fit.)

Clive felt uneasy entering the house this way, by himself, especially when Gallows had wandered out of the place with an ashen face and a sort of constrained look in his eyes. Waiting that extra hour had been difficult. They all knew what was happening to Jet was painfully true, but being aware of it from a considerable distance and staring it right in the face were two very different things. It seemed like it was now his turn to accept reality for what it was. Clive was not fond of the idea.

His thick cowboy boots thumped against the wooden floor softly, but amazingly loud in the quiet room. The only other apparent noise was the crackle and splutter of burning wood and fire in the small circular hearth. Clive adjusted his glasses, a habit he was guilty of doing whenever he was anxious. He approached Jet's bed and stood by his bedside, looking down at the boy nervously. He appeared to be asleep, lying down on the bed. Wisps of hair were in the boy's face, so he gently brushed them aside. If Jet really was asleep, Clive felt no urge to wake him.

It actually reminded him a little of when Kaitlyn slept at night, because Jet had adopted a fairly similar sleeping position. He was lying on his back with one arm carelessly thrown upward, his hand half-curled in a weak grasping gesture, the backs of his knuckles brushing against where the headboard should be. It reminded Clive of just how young Jet was, and that was endearing to him, a little. How surrealistically horrible.

Jet opened his eyes just as Clive withdrew his hand. "Hey." The boy said softly, in greeting. An age ago he probably would have shot his hand up and broken the wrist of anybody who would dare to touch him in his sleep. It was the cold-hearted loner inside of him that would have done that, and Clive wondered if Jet had consciously noticed just how much he had changed on the inside, in his mind and soul. Although Jet was only a copy of a human being, he had grown just like the real thing.

"Hey yourself." Clive murmured, standing up straight again. "My apologies, did I wake you?" He watched Jet try and sit up without any aid, but with his balance permanently disturbed it was a fruitless gesture. Cursing softly, the drifter had to accept the hand of his old friend, allowing Clive's strength to help him sit up. The sniper put a hand on Jet's shoulder to steady him and then carefully placed the pillow behind his back to help prop him up. Jet didn't struggle against this probably unnecessary aid, he must have already become used to it from the other doctors that had tended to him.

"You're here, so I'm meant to be awake, so it's fine." Jet clarified sleepily, rubbing a little at his eyes. They were only very pale violet now, washed out and obscure. "There's no clock in here so I can't tell the time. I think they made it that way on purpose. Gallows told you to come?"

"Yes, he seemed quite disturbed." Said the other man, sitting down by the bed. Gallows must have sat here earlier and had listened to the things that had made him upset. It was a process that Clive had to go through as well. They all had to. If the sniper knew as much about Jet as he thought he did, then Jet was probably taking some kind of final satisfaction out of it as well. It felt like something Jet would do. Clive's voice took on a disapproving turn, the voice of a stern father. "Did you bully him?"

"I'd be more surprised if he _wasn't_ disturbed, y'know? I didn't bully him. I asked him to bury me. Wouldn't that disturb you as well?" Jet turned his head and looked at his friend full in the face. He smiled at the shocked look he received.

The green-haired archaeologist was blinking at him like a bespectacled owl. "I daresay it would." He admitted defeatedly, exhaling after an unnaturally long time of not taking in breath. "Such duties like that are the very last ones that a friend would wish to do, but sadly, there are the most qualified people for the job. I am…" He cleared his throat. "I am glad you did not select me."

The dying drifter rubbed a little at the bandage on his arm, his fingers tender on the bruises beneath. Clive knew that the bruise had been deliberately made, through a course of repeated injections. One shot would not cause the flesh beneath to bleed, but several in the same place would easily do the trick. It looked like the surgical wound was bothering Jet to a small degree. If he had taken painkillers earlier, perhaps they were now wearing off. "No Clive." Jet interjected, shaking his head a little, almost looking at him coyly. "You win the second prize. It's not all my gella and it ain't a new pony, you're good with words, so you get to write what goes on my grave. My… uh, what's the word?"

Clive looked like he had taken a sickly turn. "Your epitaph." He sighed. "That is what it is called."

"Yeah, that thing. You do it."

His hand went up to grasp the frame of his glasses behind one ear. Clive looked very nervous. "Jet, I feel as disturbed as Gallows was." He breathed, leaning back. The seat he was on had no head to it and he nearly fell off his stool. Jet snorted once with suppressed laughter at the spectacle that Clive had almost made. The older man felt like somebody had just poured a bucket of ice-cold water down his shirt collar, or like an ice maiden had planted a crawling kiss upon the back of his neck.

Jet's hand had stopped fiddling with the bandage around his arm. With an extreme amount of effort on his own part, the boy was able to press his hands down hard into the bed and use the muscles in his shoulders to shift his entire body around to face Clive, so that he didn't have to turn his head anymore. It twisted the sheets and blankets around him, but he could always fix that later. "Good." Jet intoned. "You're supposed to. If you're my friend, you'll do it. I don't want somebody I've never met before doin' it, Virginia would get too weepy over it, and I don't think Gallows knows how to spell properly. That leaves you."

"I am glad that the process of elimination chose me." Clive said, sourly and a little snidely. He didn't really mean the sharpness of his tone, but he was a little hurt that Jet was being so methodical over things. So _mechanical_ over things.

"I _trust_ you, Clive. You understand that?" For a very short moment, a glimpse of sincerity showed up in the silver-haired boy's eyes. It was naked, not hidden by the faded violet hue.

He knew that Jet was telling the truth. There was no question about it. Clive knew that he would do it. It was his responsibility as Jet's friend and comrade to do it. It wouldn't be pleasant, and his worst fear was that he might screw up in some way or another, but if he did, he would at least keep his word. There was no way he could break an oath to a dying friend.

For the first time in what felt like an age, Clive felt a phantomish craving in the back of his mind, in the pulse of his blood, like an itch that needed to be scratched. "I understand it." He replied, clenching a hand into a fold of his dull red coat. "Jet, if you do not mind, may I please… um, may I please indulge myself?"

"Huh?" Jet looked blank.

"Please?"

"Well, go ahead. If you want." He didn't know if he was opening up a can of paper spring snakes or not, but Clive looked excessively nervous, like he was sitting on a nest of ants. Maybe Jet had been too bold to ask Clive to write his epitaph, because even if Gallows had been able to handle a direct question relating to Jet's oncoming death, there was no indication that Clive would be able to handle the same thing. He was smart where Gallows was dumb, but maybe he was also weak where Gallows had been strong.

"Thank you." Clive dug around in his coat pocket for awhile, leaning to the side a little so that his hand would have enough room to search in peace. His hand grasped around something firm and Jet watched him pull out a small silver case, which he laid upon his leg. Opening it, he pulled out a small, perfectly rolled cigarette, which he lit from a zippo lighter he procured from his other pocket. He looked at Jet rather abashedly. "I'm sorry. It helps me remain calm." He said, "If the smoke starts to bother you in any way, just tell me and I shall put it out."

"I didn't know you smoked." Jet admitted, telling the truth. He had never seen Clive with a cigarette before in all the time that he had known the man, nor had he smelt the odor of tobacco smoke around Clive's person. If Clive entertained any sort of habit towards it, then he hid it exceptionally well. Jet's breathing was perfectly stable, and he had hung around plenty of smokers back during his days as a solo drifter, so the smoke didn't bother him at all. In fact, it was almost sort of nostalgic to his small amount of distant memories.

"Well, I like to think that I have mostly beaten it years and years ago, but I still have one now and then, because it is soothing to the nerves." Clive took a small drag on his cigarette and then blew the smoke away from Jet. He leaned over a little closer towards his friend and whispered; "Please do not tell anybody about it. I have been trying to keep this as secretive as I can." He gave Jet a slightly pleading look that almost brought within him the urge to laugh out loud. He easily managed to suppress the impulse, and silently remarked upon how many secrets he was being made to keep today. They could trust in Jet from now on, because where Jet was going their secrets would not mean anything at all.

Jet offered the green-haired sniper a knowing grin, a conspirator's grin. "I remember trying that once, the smoke brings back the memories. I didn't like it very much, and besides, you can't run very fast when you're hooked on those things. I won't say nothing to nobody." Clive nodded once in gratitude. If he bore any discomfort with Jet using the double-negative, he chose not to show it. "How do you mask the smell?"

Clive smiled jokingly, tapping the first traces of ash onto an empty dish upon Jet's bedside table. A few hours earlier they had contained Jet's painkillers. "Cough syrup." The older man answered cryptically, attempting a joke. "Lots and lots of cough syrup."

They both started to laugh. It was hearty, genuine laughter. Clive had to pull his glasses forward a little and rub a thumb against the corners of his eyes in order to brush away the tears. Jet laughed until he felt a slight ache in one of his sides. It was a strange, new sensation to feel, because Jet really couldn't remember the last time he had had a good laugh like that, without there being any malice or spite in his meaning. He felt that as he drew ever closer to the end of all things, his inner defenses were coming down, one by one. How much more would he learn of himself before the day was through?

"We drifters are so fucked up." Jet stated observantly, seeing everything from the pink-tinged view of one in good humor. What was even better was that the nap he had taken earlier had cleared up any spot of tiredness that had been within him previously. "Just like this. Just like our world."

"Yes." Clive concurred, his voice lighthearted, but his words containing a far more serious undertone. "But our world is our world, and it is what gave us life and what will ultimately bring us death. The only thing that separates us is time, and, of course, conscious memory." Clive looked down at his cigarette again. "I really do know that I should quit these, but I just haven't the willpower to succeed. The best I can do is save them for small, rare little indulgences and guilt myself upon them in private. There is nothing more that I can do."

The smile Jet had been wearing had faded and Jet looked upwards slightly, in contemplation. A hand went up to gently touch his chin. "Just like how people ruin Filgaia. They used to do it so badly that this world was almost up shit creek without a paddle, but it ain't so bad nowadays. But I _know_, and I could bet a million gella on this and make some easy money, that things and people are gonna come and go and try to fuck things up all over again. People feel bad about it, that's where all the chocks in the Guardian shrines come from, but in the end, there's nothing more they can do about it either."

Clive had sobered up some as Jet was musingly talking. He crossed his legs and laid a hand on his knee anxiously. "I suppose you, myself and the world are more similar than we originally thought. Life is made from the same substance and then given its own mould. It would do us well to remember that as well as we can. The fact, the similarity and the sense that it can be made and broken so easily, it almost fills me with fear. Indeed, it scares me half to death."

"It scares you?" Jet echoed. "Why?"

"All my life I have been filled with a sense of my own mortality." Clive began to explain, feeling bad for burdening his problems on a dying boy. But because Jet was like this way, it was like having an sympathetic person to talk to. He had never thought that he would be able to talk to Jet in this way. "I am frightened of death. This entire business with you makes me quite nervous inside. Both my parents passed away when I was very young, too young to remember, so I am not sure what experiencing death would be like. I have tried to desensitize myself towards it by becoming a bounty hunter, a monster killer by trade, and I have indeed witnessed the death of hundreds of monsters, but it is not the same."

"Huh, that's strange. A grown man is being afraid of something so stupid. You might as well be running from the bogeyman or vampires in the night." Jet criticized, a disapproving look on his face. "What's there to be scared of? It's just death. It happens for a second, then it's all over. There's nothing to it."

"How do you stand it?" Clive murmured, fidgeting a little with his free hand. Jet was being so calm and cool about things in the face of what was to come, and Clive just couldn't see how he was managing it. He himself had avoided thinking on Jet's death for such a long time, blotting it out of his mind, but the mention of having to write his friend's epitaph was like the straw that broke the camel's back, and he had no choice but to know. To really, purely _know_.

He was afraid of death. Now, it appeared like he was afraid of Jet's death, empathetically feeling the fear for the boy, and _through_ the boy.

It was terrible.

Jet looked away from the questioning, expectant gaze that Clive was giving him and he rubbed at his temple a little, sighing. For him, everything seemed so easy now, so black and white. But for Clive, who had lived far longer than he had and had experienced more of life and the world, he supposed his bonds to the land of the living were far stronger than his. He had a family to go home to, and Jet did not. No wonder the sniper was afraid.

"Look…" The silver-haired drifter began, clearing his throat a little in order to prepare for a big speech. If it would calm Clive's anxieties, it was worth a try. "When you're dying, lots of stuff happens and the shit does hit the fan. In the beginning you panic, because it _is_ really kind of frightening, and then you get angry at the world for making things the way they are. I know I did. But no matter how you feel about it, it'll change nothing. It gets to the point that you're willing to bargain with the Guardians or any deity that'll listen to you, as long as they'd let you live, but you'll get no reply. The Guardians won't answer your prayers, because this is how it was _meant_ to be."

The older man started to speak. "Then what is the-"

"Shut up, I'm not done talking yet." Jet snapped, looking annoyed. A little bit of tiredness crept back into the boy's expression. "There's just no point in worrying or despairing over it. When things _really_ start to get bad, there's just a part of you that shuts down and doesn't care anymore. In the end you're just too tired or ruined to give a damn. It really isn't so bad, that's what I think. I don't want to live like this forever. I'll take whatever I can get."

Clive regarded him dolefully, but with a tinge of quiet admiration. "You are very brave, Jet." He had a question he wanted to ask his friend, but it was on a delicate subject, one that he wasn't sure that he should bring up. He was genuinely curious and _wanted_ to know, but not at the expense of upsetting Jet. He decided to give it a shot, and if Jet backed away from the subject, he wouldn't pursue it any further. "You know… when you had that attack in the tunnels of the Zenom mountains, for a minute or more you were indeed dead. What was that like?"

This question actually surprised Jet. He knew that he had fainted while in the tunnels from intense pain, but nobody had actually told him that he had _died_ there before. One of his hands came up and rested over his chest. "You're kidding, did I actually _die_?" He asked in astonishment.

"It did seem that way. Your heart had stopped beating and you were not breathing at all. Luckily Gallows and Virginia managed to resuscitate you successfully." Clive explained gently, smiling at his friend. He had expected that the doctors in Baskar would have mentioned that to him by now, but now that he really thought about it, how would _they_ know? Only the Maxwell Gang and Jenny had been there at the time.

Jet looked down at his hand clasped against his own chest, over his heart that had been revived by Gallows' pounding hands and Virginia's sweet life-giving breath. It felt more touching than anything they had ever done for him before. Friends really did save lives. "I didn't know." Jet admitted quietly, lowering his hand. "But it does make sense, because Gallows and I were talkin' about it earlier before you came in. I… I did see some pretty far out stuff." Jet looked up at Clive, a tiny devious smirk playing on his lips. "Do you want to know about it?"

Nodding slowly, Clive stubbed out his cigarette upon the saucer on the bedside table, pinching out the end as it was only half used up. He'd probably smoke the rest sometime later. Jet knew that Clive was afraid of death. He had said so himself only minutes earlier, and when Jet thought carefully about it, it kind of made sense. He was a man with the middle years of his life ahead of him, where obligations were at their most important. He had left the carefree days of his youth behind him now, and he was willing to dedicate his days towards his friends, his family and his gang. He had worked hard for such a happy, loving life. He just didn't want to lose it now.

Jet found he envied him for that. Those were days he would never get to experience for himself. The only thing he could do now was to live vicariously, through Clive. For as long as he could, anyway. There was no reason for Clive to have to fear death so badly, outside of his own mind. He decided upon the spur of the moment exactly what to do, and later on as he thought about it, he knew that he would have easily done it again if he needed to.

"Don't be scared of death, there's nothing bad about it." Jet decided to lie, making up his memories as he went along. "When I died, I remember a bright shining light and I knew that nothing bad was going to happen to me. It was pure, like lace and running water. In fact, it almost felt like somebody was protecting me. Like somebody I knew was there with me." The very last part was a small slice of truth. He really _had_ felt somebody there, beside him. Well, he vaguely thought that he did.

Clive looked hopeful. "Is that true?" He questioned tentatively, softly. Jet knew that most of it was something he had just pulled out of his own ass, but as long as it made Clive feel better about himself and calm his fears on death, then what real harm could it do for him? The power of faith was powerful stuff, it both brought peace of mind to people, while it could just as easily take it away. If there really was a God of this world, Jet felt that He would forgive him for the lies and false hope.

"Bet my life on it." Jet whispered under his breath, in a tone so softly that Clive could not hear him. If Gallows had been right about the afterlife being subjective to every different person, then perhaps he was even telling the truth. Until he was sure, the white lie was harmless. "Just don't be scared of dying. Clive, I… I envy you." The boy's violet eyes appeared to be match his face, now that his complexion had paled somewhat from his deterioration. It made Clive feel like Jet was looking straight _into_ him, rather than straight _at_ him. Suddenly it hit him. Jet was beginning to look like a ghost.

"Envy me?" Clive asked, taken aback. "Why?"

It looked _so_ true. With his silver hair, his pale skin and his white shirt, Jet already looked like he had passed away a long time ago and was an earthly incarnation of part of the heavenly host. "Well, I guess there's lots of reasons now that I think about it." Jet smiled. "You're almost an old man, so you've lived through a lot of your life already. You've got so many memories of Filgaia that I'll never get a chance to see for myself. Not only that, you've got a family. I can't even begin to imagine what that must feel like. To belong to a group of people alike to you not only in mind, but also in body and blood. I wish that I…"

So that was what was troubling him. Clive was being pulled into familiar ground now, a place that he was firmer and stronger in, more in touch with the reality. Speaking of death so much before had made him feel like he had been walking on an invisible bridge, over a vast chasm. Jet had taken Clive's shaking hand and had lead him over that rickety bridge, while Clive had fearfully kept his eyes closed. Now they were at a bridge that Jet was afraid to cross.

Clive had to be the guide now.

"Jet." Clive began, taking the boy's weak hand and giving it a comforting squeeze. "You _do_ have a family. In mind you have a family in Gallows and Virginia and I, in Shane and Maya and Alfred and Florina and everyone. We are your brothers and sisters in arms, Jet, and we have stuck with you whenever you have needed our help. That is what families are for, after all. In body and blood you have the planet of Filgaia herself. You are the Sample, part of her biological make-up in a human form. You are the son of Filgaia, Jet, and she is your mother. You have never been alone."

"You always sound so preachy." Jet said after a few moments of thought. "An' to me, that kind of sounds like bullshit. But it's probably as full of bullshit as the stuff that I said to you, so I won't complain. I really have a mother? And brothers and sisters?"

"And a father." Clive pressed, slightly embarrassed. "I mean, I do not know if you ever saw me that way, but there were times when you did feel like a son to me, Jet. It is not too strange to you, is it?"

Jet seemed to have withdrawn into himself, mentally. Perhaps he was a little embarrassed himself. He bowed his head. "'Feels a little strange," He mumbled into where his scarves used to be, "But it's okay. I won't call you dad, though. 'Never will."

"I know." That was perfectly alright with Clive. He didn't expect anything like that. Jet was tentative to ask his friend the next question, what really felt like to him to be the _most_ important question, but now that Clive had agreed to be Jet's father, that was what fathers were for. Answering questions. Weren't they?

Just thinking of things in that way sent a small tingle up part of Jet's spine. "What time is it?"

"It will be dark soon."

That sounded about right. The shadow that came from the sun hole in the roof was beginning to fade away. He had watched it appear in the morning, creep along the floor for hours on end, secure in its futile little life, and now night was coming to bond it into a part of itself. Little shadow becomes great night. What would little Jet become, eventually? "I thought so. I think I'm ready now. Can you send in Virginia when you leave?"

Clive looked at him kindly. This was where Jet's other fear was coming from. "Of course I will. You wish for me to leave now?"

Jet nodded, and, from out of nowhere, he leant forward off the bed and gave Clive a hug. It was only a small, awkward hug, but it was one that was special all the same. "I'm glad I met you, Clive. I never would have made any sense out of what I am if it weren't for you, an' I never would have had the chance to see a different kind of life other than the one I was living. Maybe, if I had ever gotten any older, I would have tried it for myself…"

He gently pulled Jet away and forced him to lie back down onto the bed. Clive got to the quick business of tidying up the blankets over Jet's body and making sure Jet was comfortable. He fussed until the boy got annoyed and tried to push him away. He noticed that Clive had tears in his eyes. The sniper raised a sleeve to wipe his face, forgot he was wearing glasses and almost knocked them off his face. He corrected himself and brushed the tears away. "The worst thing that an adult will ever witness in their life is when a child dies young. All they can do is wish that it were themselves instead."

"But when a child dies young, they remain young _forever_. It's immortality. It's what everybody wishes for." The drifter smiled weakly. "Guess what, Clive? I'm going to live forever." Jet closed his eyes. "Just you watch."

At that point Clive left wordlessly. He couldn't stand to be there a moment longer. His time with Jet was up.

Jet had raised a hand sleepily in farewell. "…Goodbye." He said, then was silent.


	12. Virginia, The Words I Cannot Say

(A/N: I kind of dreaded writing this chapter, because romance isn't generally something I write very often, and when I do, it's an undercurrent to something more action-y or horror-y. I hope I did this well enough. Did I do good?)

When the worst or most frightening of situations arises, the mind has been reputed to do some pretty strange things. Virginia had been forced to kill quite a lot of time while waiting for it to be her turn to go inside and see Jet. She had truthfully wanted to go and be the first one to see him and check up on him, to see if he was alright. As Jet's significant other, she felt she deserved that right. But it eventually dawned on her with a surprising stillness, as she first watched Gallows walk into the medicine house on his own, that there was also something deep within her mind that didn't want to see Jet sick or crippled ever again, and even not see Jet at all. She couldn't bear to see him accepting that sort of fate. Virginia was glad to be last.

She ran some errands and took Jenny home in her free time, the younger girl admitting to feeling exhausted. The trip to Serenitatis had been a little hard on both of them. It was not over yet. When she returned to the medicine house again, freshened up and with a brown paper parcel under one arm, Clive was outside and leaning against the wall of the building, something small and indistinct in his mouth. He had been looking up at the sky, but when he noticed Virginia he very quickly concealed whatever it was he had been sucking on. He looked to be embarrassed, like a child caught in the act of doing something discreet. Sheepishly, he spoke. "Oh, there you are. It is your turn now. He wishes to see you."

This both pleased and terrified her. She smiled nervously, keeping a firm hold on the item within her hands. Clive had noticed it as well, but had kept his inquiry to himself. If Virginia was to have anything, it would be for Jet. "…I don't know what I should say to him." She admitted hesitantly. "What should I say?"

Clive shrugged half-heartedly. "Say whatever it is that comes into your mind. Jet has not become mentally retarded, he is the same as he always was. If it worries you, forget that he had any problems in the first place. The last thing that he would want is excess sympathy." He put his hand warmly on Virginia's shoulder, looking at her in a fatherly way. "It will be alright, leader. Don't be afraid." Obligingly, he toed the front door open, which had been left unlocked, an act of lax courtesy for the girl.

Gallows and Clive had had the courage to step inside. She had to prove that she could do the very same thing. If not, then what right did she have over her title as the team leader? This evening would not just test her heart, but her mettle as a drifter as well. She had to be strong. "Thank you, Clive." She replied. As she stepped inside, the door closed shut. She could hear Clive walking away now, fulfilled of any duty that he currently had. He was probably going to join Gallows at the local pub. That was how most men coped with their problems and feelings, by washing it away in a tide of beer and ale. It was sad, in a way.

"Hey Virginia!"

Suddenly hearing Jet's voice, loud and strong in such a quiet environment caused Virginia to jump unexpectedly. The inside of the medicine house was dim, and growing ever dimmer as the evening grew on. The small shaft of light that came in through the ceiling was only a shadow of its former self. The only real source of light now was the warm hearth, burning in the center of the room. Jet was sitting on his bed. When Virginia reacted to his call, he stood up to greet her.

It was only standing in the barest sense of the word. He had fished a walking stave out from under his bed after Clive had left, using it as a complete support in lieu of his legs. One of his doctors had left it there, just in case he had really needed it. He couldn't walk, but with this, he could stand. Both his hands were wrapped firmly around the wooden length, holding onto it like it was a buoy in a raging ocean. His legs were lax and lifeless beneath the rest of his body, all the strain and tension existing in his arms and shoulder muscles. Jet looked proud, as if in his act against standing he was flipping off all the gods at once.

Virginia panicked, dropping the parcel she had been carrying and racing up over to him. "Are you crazy! You'll hurt yourself!" She snapped, prizing Jet's hands away from the stave in startled anger. The boy squawked in surprise as his support vanished and his legs buckled underneath him, grabbing at anything that would help him to stand up. He tried to lean back so that he would fall on the bed, but his foot accidentally hooked with the back of Virginia's ankle and drew him forwards in the struggle, ending up on the floor anyway, but cracking the back of his head on the edge of the bed.

He moaned in pain, bringing a hand up to rub at the wounded spot. The stave had clattered to the floor beside him, forsaken. Virginia crouched onto her knees herself and inspected Jet carefully. He was sprawled comically, like a child who had fallen off his pony for the very first time. "Sorry…" She murmured self-consciously, realizing that she had started their final meeting in an excessively stupid way. "I didn't mean to…"

Jet glared at her accusingly, then offered her a small, lopsided smirk. "You're right." He grunted, pulling his hand away from the soon-to-be-forming bump on his head. "I just hurt myself. What the hell is wrong with you? Do me a favor and lend me a hand, alright?" He reached out and grabbed her hand, relying on her strength to pull him up again. He was almost surprised at how easily Virginia managed it. Even if she was only a woman, she was a strong woman, nevertheless. Probably why Jet tolerated her so much.

"What the hell is wrong with _me_? Jet, what the hell is wrong with _you_? You're not supposed to get out of bed, remember? If you know you can't walk then what's the point of trying?" Virginia quipped, already exasperated and reminded of just how much Jet annoyed her to death. She pushed him into a sitting position onto the bed. As an afterthought, she picked up Jet's walking stave and leant it against the wall, only a little longer than an arm's reach away. He wouldn't be able to grab it there.

"I wasn't _trying_ to walk." Jet argued with a defiant attitude. "I was just tryin' to stand up. Is there some kind of law against that now? You expect me to starve to death or piss my pants whenever I need to get up and get food or go outside or somethin'? Fuck that."

"That's what the doctors are for." Sighed Virginia, reaching up to touch where Jet had been hurt. He winced with pain, but it didn't seem to be too bad. There was no blood, so it would probably be fine in a little while.

"So you say," Jet said in a soft tone, "But I hate doctors. I'm a drifter, I can do things my own way. But if I told them what I really think of 'em, they'd take my painkillers away. I need them…" A faintly hurt look came into his eyes. "…'Real bad nowadays. I never knew just how many parts of your body can hurt until recently. I guess I really am turning into a complaining old man."

Virginia sat down next to Jet and then put her arms around him. He was now staring at the floor, but he also seemed to be accepting of the gesture. He didn't pull away. "You're a moron, Jet." She murmured. "But I missed yelling at you. I wondered if I would ever get to do it again. When you were carried out of the tunnels yesterday you looked like a corpse. I thought that when you would wake up again, you would be blind and deaf and completely empty, like a vegetable forever. I thought I would lose you even before you had truly gone."

"If that were to ever happen, I'd want anybody with an ARM nearby to shoot me in the head. It'd give Filgaia a little extra space to breathe." Jet smiled, unconsciously putting an arm around Virginia. "Don't you have enough faith in me to know that I'd make sure there'd be a next time, even if it was just for one more day? I can hold on just long enough until you're willing to let me go, I think. By the way," Jet added obstinately, "I never for a moment missed you bitching at me."

"But you did miss _me_?"

Jet looked at her strangely, like he had been asked the dumbest question in all the world. At the same time, it felt like the hardest question in all the world as well. How was he to answer a question like that and still keep his reputation as a hardened outlaw with no feelings? But that was not true, he _did_ have a great many feelings, they were just very deeply buried away. This was probably his last chance to talk to Virginia, honestly. What more could he lose now?

"Uh… of course I missed you." Jet admitted gruffly, taking a great interest in the socks on his feet. Staring at them would be easier than staring at Virginia's face. "In the tunnels you were all I could basically think about. That you take being leader too seriously sometimes, that you're an annoying bitch whenever you wanna be, stuff like that. But… but when I really, honestly thought that I was dying, I thought about how much I l-" He paused. That word stuck in his throat angrily, like coagulating blood upon a shirt. Jet blinked once, confused at himself.

_I can't say it. There's no way in hell that I can say it. It's not me, it's not something I can do. _

He knew that Gallows would make Chieftain and Clive would have another eight or nine kids before Jet would be able to admit that he _loved_ anybody. He knew very clearly that he did, but there was a thin, translucent barrier in his mind and heart that prevented him from saying it out loud. There was always the off chance that he would say it tenderly and honestly to Virginia one day, and have her laugh at him and turn away. That would be a hurt more than he could bear. He'd rather not get into that situation at all, even if it left him lonely. If Virginia really knew him as much as he thought she did, she wouldn't have to hear the words to know that they were there.

Shaken by just how closely he had gotten to saying the L-word, Jet anxiously changed the subject. "If my memory isn't as fucked up as I think it is, it's been six months, hasn't it?" He asked the girl beside him, thinking back to the recent past. Their relationship had been started by an ignoble truth that existed in the world, and by some strange kind of coincidence that was something neither himself nor Virginia could explain, it had attained some sort of purity, some sort of real _meaning_ to it.

Virginia's lips stretched into an amused smile, one that was close to laughter, reflecting on that time. "You mean the night you were too nervous to go to the cathouse?" She giggled into his shoulder.

"I was _not_ nervous! Not at all!" He argued indignantly.

Jet was what he was, a man, and even drifters got lonely as they traveled across the face of the wastelands. He had saved up a neat little pile of money by the time they had stopped on over at the immoral town of Little Twister, a debaucherous town of drugs, gambling and sex. Jet had avoided the first, dabbled in the second and desired the third. But he had not quite trusted the cleanliness of the women in that town, and so had gone to Virginia for advice. That 'advice' had turned out to be something much more. Each drifter had a price for their services, Jet knew that, but he had far more faith in Virginia than a sprawled drugged-up Twister whore, lying in a puddle of jizz in some hotel, in the red light area of town.

Virginia's price had been mortifyingly high. He later learned that it had probably been a test to him, to see if he would consent to wasting so much gella on her, when there were much cheaper options. Perhaps he had stuck with her just to prove his point, but as time went by he began to feel a deeper attachment to her, as something more than just a casual screw. He didn't really know if Virginia felt the same way as well, until the day came that she stopped asking him for money. He had gruffly pointed this out one evening, after everybody had gone to bed, and she had shut him up with a kiss, one that had said; _'You're mine now Jet, I've decided it. If you don't like this, tell me right now so I can slap you in the face. I don't know how it happened, but I have fallen for you.'_

He could not have answered her even if he had wanted to. His mouth had been quite occupied with something else. The fact that he sort of liked the way Virginia was thinking made it a moot point anyway. This young woman knew him, understood him in a way that nobody else had been able to do, and although it went against the values he had learnt to keep in life, he wanted to stay with her too. Jet wasn't quite sure if he had really loved Virginia in the beginning of their little pledge, but unbeknownst to him, the words Jenny had spoken at Serenitatis rung absolutely true. Like a seedling, love grew. It grew strong and rooted itself deep into his heart, until he was aware of nothing else.

"Time flies, doesn't it?" Jet said gently, thinking on the past. "It's only when there's hardly any left that you realize how fast it goes, or how little the Guardians decide to give you. If I had known there was only six months left, I would've come to you much sooner. Listen… why on Filgaia did you pick me?" He finally said, asking him a question that had taken him half a year to say.

Resting her head on his shoulder, Virginia looked at a particularly pretty tapestry on the wall, her expression serious. She wasn't sure herself. "I don't know." She said after a moment. "I guess in the beginning I was amused and curious about you, and I didn't mind making a few gella along the way. That's what drifters do, after all. Everybody needs somebody, Jet. We're only human. Clive has Catherine and Gallows has that red-haired girl back in Claiborne, I think her name was Becky or something. I guess I decided that I needed somebody as well, and that somebody turned out to be you. We were both lonely."

"Yeah." Jet agreed. "We were." And with the advent of Jet's demise, Virginia was going to be lonely again. How long would it take her to find somebody else? He didn't know. Not too long, he hoped, but not too short either. Jet got very close to swallowing his next few words, but just gave in and said them instead. "I was happy." He stated calmly, but then backtracked again. "That is to say, I _am_ happy. I drifted for eleven years, I got a nice little stash of gella saved up, some tolerable friends, an' you too." He pulled Virginia away from his body and looked at her in the face, evenly, kindly. "That's what people want, isn't it? I know it's what _I_ want."

"Memories." Virginia answered softly, taking his hand. "That's what we all want. Good memories of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Memories of our homes, of our friends and of happy memories of the past. Memories of everything that we love. It's those kind of memories that make us complete." She gave his hand a gentle squeeze, knowing very well about Jet's lack of memory. "I know it has only been a very short time for you upon this planet, but I like to think that quality of life depends on how precious our few memories are, regardless of how many there can be."

"You helped me to make a lot of them." Jet replied with a careful look at his very dear friend. "You and Gallows and Clive and a lot of other people as well. I l-… that is to say, I feel as if I should thank the whole bunch of you."

This was a very different Jet to the one that Virginia was used to. He was far more talkative and open with his thoughts and feelings. When one was dying, she guessed there really wasn't much point to hiding things anymore. Still, she could sense that Jet was keeping something held back. Maybe he thought that if he became totally vulnerable to her, spread out to her critical inspection, she would be too disgusted with his inner self to love him anymore. It was a silly fear, but that didn't make it a false fear either. She wanted him to trust her. "I love you, Jet." She finally said, speaking deeply from her heart.

He leant forward and kissed her softly. The bump he had gotten on the back of his head was easily forgotten. "I know." He said as he pulled away. "Don't you worry, I know. Thanks, Ginny." He offered her a reassuring smile, then his eyes flicked to the floor of the medicine house, the parcel that Virginia had brought with her left lying on the ground. She had dropped it when Jet had startled her. He would have gotten up and fetched it himself, had he the ability to walk. "What's that?" He asked, gesturing towards it.

She jumped a little as the package was mentioned to her, the memory of it leaping back into her mind. She had forgotten all about it. The drifter leader smiled coyly, standing up to go and grab it. "Oh, that! I got you some stuff you might like." She explained, picking it up from the floor. It seemed to be relatively light in her arms, so what could it possibly be?

Virginia placed the small parcel upon Jet's lap expectantly, smiling a little smile. Jet put his hand down on the brown paper and wondered how he was going to remove the thin coarse string bound around it without a pair of scissors. It looked like it had been tied up very tightly. Jet looked at Virginia, pressing down a little with his fingertips, as if to guess from touch alone what it was. "What is it?" He asked, seeking an answer.

"Open it and see."

Jet was a little confused by this, but was also slightly curious himself. What on Filgaia kind of present could you give to a dying man? "Okay…" He mumbled, hooking one thin digit beneath a loop of tight string and slowly sliding it towards the corner of the parcel, where he was easily be able to lever it off. The string pinched off the flow of blood to the end of his fingertip, but after only a moment the loop came free and he could rip the rest of the cord away. The paper wrapping was fresh and folded neatly onto itself, so when Jet straightened it up again, the present opened up neatly, like a blooming flower.

There was fabric underneath the paper, feeling softer and cleaner than usual, but still familiar. Beneath the brown was a flash of white and red. His scarf. Jet lifted out a ragged fold of anger-red scarf and held it in his hands. He felt an odd, overwhelming sensation of wet sickness wash over him like a tidal wave, as if the grim reaper himself had swept into the room invisibly and had stamped a great big red X straight onto his forehead. Jet found himself at a loss for words, looking beneath his scarf to find his dark shirt, his tan coat, all of his clothes and his ammunition belt safely tucked away. It was all here. This was his _life_.

"Look," Virginia said blithely, sliding her hand into the parcel and rifling through the clothes, "They weren't lost after all. One of the Baskars said they saved your clothes right before they torched the larvae pool. I had them washed and dried for you. Honestly Jet, when was the last time you had that outfit cleaned? It must have been ages ago."

"It's kind of hard to get laundry done when you're on the run from the law." Jet retorted softly, detached from his smart alec and ready words. He held one strip to his face and pressed it against his cheek. It felt softer than he had ever remembered it before. Alien. "… I've always used this thing to hide my face. I've had a bounty on my head ever since that day years and years ago when I put on this scarf and robbed my first bank. Thinking back on it now, I can remember just how young and stupid I was. I couldn't have been more than three years old."

"We've all done stupid things in the past and we're always going to regret them. But if we didn't do those stupid things in the first place we wouldn't know any better and we'd never learn how to improve." Virginia said, happy that he had appreciated her gift. It wasn't much, but it was _something_.

Jet reached into the bottom of the parcel and pulled something out of the pile of clean clothes. He held it in one hand and looked at it solemnly. "This is…" He began, but then found he could not finish. He lowered his hand into his lap, taking the object with it. Jet thought he had lost Jenny's bracelet in the tunnels when he had fainted, but he must have been sadly mistaken, for there it was, red beads, hawk feathers and all. If Jet's scarf represented his past, then this bracelet surely represented his present, and between those two, there was no room for his future. It was the gift from people who shouldn't have been caring about him, but did anyway.

"Virginia…" Jet whispered, tearing up. "Nobody else is going to come in here, right?"

"It's just us." Virginia replied softly.

"…Okay." He said with a small touch of relief, then he bowed his head slightly and started to cry. He knew for a very long time that he was going to be reduced to this eventually, but he had put it off as much as he could. There was no stopping the degradation of the soul. Jet wasn't even very sure _what_ it was he was crying about, but it felt like the crushing weight of the last four weeks of uncertainty had come tumbling down on top of him, and all he could do was weep for the wound that Filgaia had inflicted upon his body. There were just too many reasons left for him to count, yet Jet _knew_ that he needed to cry.

This was not something Virginia was expecting to see. Concerned, she put her arms around him again, but was denied that when Jet tried to tear himself away. He didn't want her to touch him, not when he was like this. He could not retreat very far from her, but he tried anyway. "Go away…" He said at last, his voice thick with tears, gritted between his teeth, making it sound like a half-growl. "Don't look at me. Please…"

Virginia had always been determined to have things her own way. Shaking her head and uttering one short simple "No.", she reached out for him again. She didn't allow Jet to squirm away. He was completely unable to overpower her, though his attempts were only half-hearted and weak. She hugged him strongly, hearing him curse her name angrily. Counting the moments that passed by, Virginia felt all the fight eventually go out of Jet's body, then he trembled when he realised that there was nothing he could do to make her go away. A short, stunted sob slipped from his throat.

He found himself clinging to her willingly instead, crying into her shoulder. Minutes passed. It felt like a separate part of himself was watching his performance with disgust. It filled him with sickened revulsion. "I… don't get it…" He confessed heavily. "I dunno why I'm cryin'… but I can't stop it. 'Feels like I'm broken all over…"

"I'm sorry, honey." Virginia murmured, holding him close. "I didn't know the clothes would make you sad. I thought you'd be happy. Forgive me, please?" He didn't answer her, so there was no way she could acknowledge a reply. Unperturbed, she clucked her tongue in her mouth and pulled Jet away, holding him at an arm's length. There were trails of tears like glistening smears upon both of his cheeks. He looked down shamefully, wiping at his eyes. "Maybe you should lie down, now."

Jet nodded, accepting Virginia's aid as she helped him to get back under the covers. The girl put Jet's clothes on the table beside the bed, but before she had done that, the sick boy had slipped the wooden Baskar bracelet back onto his wrist. He couldn't bear wearing his drifting clothes now, but the bracelet was a different matter. It had been a gift from somebody who cared. He sniffed slightly, trying to force the telltale signs of his crying fit away. Jet hated this bed now, hated the way in which it become a prison for him. If it had not been for the friends who had visited him, he would not have known what to do. As composure slipped back into Jet's form, his mind cleared. "You just forget that ever happened." He said, in a mildly threatening tone.

"I don't know why that would matter, but okay." Virginia replied, sitting on the edge of Jet's bed and looking at him. It sounded like Jet was having trouble controlling the proper volume in his tone, but as their conversation drifted onwards, the faint notion that Jet had any kind of impaired hearing dwindled away. She smiled at him reassuringly. "I don't know a thing."

He still rubbed a little at his eyes, as if the tears staining them stung like weak poison upon his skin. Under the coverlets, he looked like a sleepy child. "Did you know that I made Gallows and Clive do somethin' for me, even though they didn't want to?" He asked, conversationally. "I asked Gallows to be the one to bury me when the time came, an' I asked Clive to write down whatever he wants on the grave, my epit-something-or-other. They'll do it, I know they will. It'll haunt them if they don't." This statement almost seemed to give him morbid pleasure. Jet smirked. "And you know what? I'm going to ask you to do something too. Two things, actually, because I like you so much. You feel honored?"

The girl looked over him levelly, like she was sizing up a dangerous foe. "In a way." She confessed, wondering what Jet would want her to do. If Jet was paralyzed below the waist, there were certain things that existed that were now out of the question. She bit her lip. Those day for Jet were over as well. "What do you want me to do?"

Unexpectedly, Jet blushed. "Uh… It's kind of a stupid request, now that I think about it…"

This piqued her interest. "What is it? You can tell me. When have I ever blabbed something personal about you before?"

That was a point. She had a clean record when it came to keeping secrets. Jet leant his head back against the comfortable pillow and sighed. "You're gonna laugh at me, but what the hell do I have to lose now? You see, ever since a long time ago I had this little fantasy, something I thought I'd never experience but I liked the idea anyway. It's stupid, but…" He blurted out his wish. "I've always wanted somebody to tell me a story while I was going to sleep. Like a mother." Jet was going beet red now. "Yeah, its stupid…"

She just couldn't help herself, Virginia wound up laughing just as Jet had predicted, holding a hand to her mouth to calm herself down. It was just so funny, that a feared and tough drifter like Jet would have such an innocent, an incredibly _sweet_ last request. It was overwhelmingly endearing. Jet shot her a reproachful look and tilted his head away from her, fiercely embarrassed. He coughed slightly. "I knew you would laugh…" He muttered, humiliated.

"No, no!" Virginia exclaimed, mortified at what she had done. Jet had just told her the deepest wish in his heart and she had laughed at him for it! She thought he had only been joking! The drifter leader blushed herself. "I'm sorry Jet, it's _not_ a stupid idea. I think it's a lovely one." She scooted over, a little closer to him. "What kind of story would you like to hear? I know lots."

He was regarding her intensely, trying to read if there was any kind of lie on her face. Virginia's sentiments were honest ones, so the inspection came up totally clean. Jet relaxed finally, smiling like a little boy who had gotten his way. "You know a lot, 'cause you have a lot of memories. Memories from travelling across Filgaia. I have them too, but everything… all this wasting away has made them faint and blurry in my mind. I want to remember the memories again. Ginny, can you tell me about your memories of Filgaia?"

"_Our_ memories of Filgaia." She corrected gently. "Which one in particular do you want to hear?"

He gave her a bit of a tired, cheeky smile. "Yeah. _Our_ memories. All of them. Tell me them all. Please."

She did.

xxx

"Well Jet, it was a dark and stormy night…"

xxx

She told him the tale of the Ark Scepters and the meeting of the four different drifters, of the run for making cash and the treacheries of the bumbling Cascade Gang. She told him of the cunning Maya Schroedinger and her loyal team of minions, of the three evil Prophets and the misguided Council of Seven. She laughed as she recalled Jet and Florina at the Secret Garden, and she cried as she spoke of the passing of her father at Mimir's Well. Jet listened carefully to all these stories and smiled under the coverlets. There were so many memories from just this one girl, but these memories did not just solely belong to her, they were Jet's memories as well, and the memories of all of his friends.

Memories were life, snapshots of their soul. With these, Jet finally felt that he had pieced together and earned himself a soul, something definite and precious to call his own. He felt that he owed it to all of his friends, and especially Virginia, who was here and speaking to him soft words, sweet words. Gods, he felt like he could get caught up in those words and be swept away forever. Her tone was more comforting than anything else.

Sometimes Virginia made a mistake in her storytelling and Jet spoke out to correct it, usually the names and dates of places and things. He had said before that his memories were blurry, but there must have been some sharp points, scattered here and there. The evening wore on, soon it became night. Hardly making a break in her words, the drifter leader alternated between keeping the burning hearth down to a bundle of pleasant embers and sitting beside Jet's bedridden form. At times when her mind wandered too much, she found herself gently stroking Jet's pale silver hair, the youth not complaining about the touch. He leant into it, subdued but alert.

Half-heartedly, Virginia wondered if Gallows and Clive had left the inn yet. She didn't know. She didn't particularly want to know, it felt like the universe had shrunken down dramatically, encompassing only this one room. As the night wore on, Virginia noticed that Jet's rare, clear corrections to her stories were becoming more and more incorrect, unfocused. He inisisted things like Beatrice had only had pale light blue hair, or that Clive was really five years older than what he said he was. When she talked about their mediums, Jet admitted that he no longer remembered what they were. What was a medium? What did it do? Magic? That's stupid, magic doesn't exist.

He was probably getting tired, but he still wanted to listen. He stopped making interjections as the moon rose over the colony of Baskar, just watching her with interested lavender eyes. As everything swelled to its nearing end, he finally opened his mouth and spoke.

"-the light shot from her hand, and before any of us could act, Lamium darted out before her and shielded us with his life. The expression on his face, of all things, it looked happy, completed and fulfilled. He had done his duty to the world, or what he believed to be so. He had protected us, so that we could-"

"…I'm gonna fall asleep." He said softly, apologetically. "Gotta sleep soon, before the painkillers wear off. I don't wanna be awake when they wear off. Sorry…"

Virginia halted her tale. "Do you remember the ending?"

Jet shook his head. "There isn't an ending. Not just yet. I don't think there will be one for a very long time. I reckon the Maxwell Gang is gonna be around for years to come. Isn't that right?"

"I really hope so." Virginia intoned, from her position at Jet's side. A thought came to her head. "Jet? You said that you had another task for me, that there was two. Before you go to sleep, can you tell me what the other task was?" Or had that been something false, cooked up from Jet's steadily fading cohesion, as the drugs were removed from his system?

"You remembered." Jet said, touched. "I hope you don't laugh at this one, like you laughed at the other one. Thanks for telling me a story, by the way. I'm gonna sleep better now, I just know it. Maybe I'll dream of the past." He pulled his hand up from under the blankets and placed it softly upon the crook of Virginia's elbow. He tugged on the purplish-pink fabric softly. "The other thing is… if you don't have anything else to do tonight, I was wondering if you could stay here with me, until tomorrow morning. That's all. There's a spare bed over there if you want it. I don't think you'd want to sleep here in my deathbed."

"I heard that it was bad luck. But I don't believe in superstition." She smiled, nodding once. "Even if you had asked me to get out, I probably would have stayed anyway. I don't want you to be in the dark, all alone. Not now. Not like this." Her hands reaching up to her head, she started to unbraid her hair. It began to come loose in chestnut waves.

Jet sat up, feeling a sense of warm affection for the girl. What else could it be but love? A love that had grown in defiled soil and bloomed into a pure, small white flower. If only he had had more time. He hugged her from behind, pressing his face into back of her neck. Her hair smelt like the world of far away, of horses, gunpowder and sand, with an undercurrent of the scent of the wind. Nothing was more beautiful than she. "…Ginny?" He asked, uncertain.

"Yeah?" She answered as she unlaced her boots.

"I… I really do… you know… I, uh…"

"What is it?" Virginia pressed, serenely.

Why was it so _hard_?

"…Nothing. Forget it, it's nothing."

_Bullshit._


	13. Ich Liebe Du

In the black light of uncertainty they slept side by side, stilled into oblivion only by the fact that their bodies desired it, and also because they were aware that there was nothing further they could do.

Virginia had taken the sheets and blankets from the two other neatly made beds and had built herself a snug little sleeping place, something that would keep her warm. She had set it up on the floor beside Jet's bed, moving the stool out of the way. In all honesty she had wanted to sleep in the bed with him, but Jet had been oddly adverse to the idea, reasoning that although he wanted it that way as well, it just was not right. Perhaps he feared that he would curse her somehow, if she slept with a dying man.

The night seemed watchful, holding its breath. Each light in Baskar winked out, one by one, as the darkness claimed its dues. Dreams fogged in and out like visible breath, a dark mist rising upon the loch of consciousness.

_Will you walk…a little faster…_

_They are waiting… on the shingle…_

_Let me come and join the dance…?_

It was past midnight when Jet came to again. The state he had rested in had not been like sleep at all, but more like a deep fleeting unconsciousness, his body shutting down and then starting up again uncertainly, Jet finding himself slightly trembling all over. That deep sleep had felt like a temporary death for him, long and quiet with murmurings of dreams, but Jet knew that the long and permanent sleep was not too far off from him now. He could sense it. His eyes fluttered open and he saw that the room was bathed in pale shadows, the night light enough by the grace of the moon through the Baskarian atrium ceiling, the moonlight streaming in like water.

Jet blinked tiredly as he sat up, desiring to lie back down and go to sleep. But he was also afraid that if he entertained that notion and gave into the urge, he would never wake up again. Jet knew it was now inevitable, but still, he didn't want to try. Raising a hand that was shaking a little, he pressed it against his face and let out a deep breath, and then he swallowed hard. He had wasted most of his life just wandering aimlessly, like a drifter was supposed to do, but now, after he had finally managed to put some _meaning_ into his life, some _purpose_, it was now time for it to end? It was so terribly unfair.

_I feel sort of numb, my stomach kind of hurts, and my heart feels funny…_

Lack of proper circulation, failing liver, kidneys and an erratic heartbeat, Clive would have said in his scholarly way. Jet could picture what his body was doing inside of him, then resigned himself to the thought that it was probably better for him to ignore. Jet's shaking hand slowly dragged down to the left side of his chest where it was able to count his heartbeats without the aid of a stethoscope, loud and thudding and false. He removed his hand after a time and it flopped to his side, upon the blankets pooled all around him.

Virginia was asleep beside the bed. She was on her knees and leaning against the wooden framework and woven mattress, slumped upon it, her hands laced together in a relaxed image of prayer. She had been praying for him. His heart tugged painfully for her, for her innocent actions that he could only appreciate out loud when nobody else was there. He did not deserve prayer, not a bastard outlaw like himself.

He moaned softly, folding his arms around his stomach. His body was empty, drained of the drugs that the doctors had used to stave the pain away. It made him want to shake and cry out like a helpless kitten until somebody came and brought the numbness back to his body, a numbness that had claimed any use of his lower limbs. Below his waist the nerves in his legs arched and twanged like cords of live wire, sending sparks of pain into his head. There was feeling now, but dear _God_, it hurt.

_Gotta… take advantage of this while I can. Maybe… maybe I can stand. Where the hell did she put that goddamned stick…?_

It was leaning against the wall, a dark shadow in a forest of dark shadows, just beyond the reach of Jet's outstretched hands. She had put it there on purpose, to make sure that he couldn't get away. He felt like a prisoner and knew that any strenuous movements might jolt him into unconscious once more, a faint that would end up terminal. Lifting himself up onto his knees, hastily ripping the blankets away, Jet pressed one hand to the wall against the head of his bed and used it for support, leaning over and reaching out with his right hand as far as his fingers could reach.

The very tips of his fingers nudged anxiously at the wooden length of the walking stave. Gritting his teeth for more reasons than just frustration, Jet tried to tuck them around the other side of the stick, nearly falling off the bed. He prodded experimentally, watching the long thin shadow slide slowly towards him. It went slowly at first, then lost its balance on the ground and just fell towards him, in a way that would easily bonk him on the head if he didn't move away in time. Cursing softly, both Jet's hands came up to grab at it and he lost all support as well, clutching at the stick like it was his one last lifeline in the world.

It held there as Jet pressed his body weight upon it, forcing it against the ground. Neither of them would fall. The dying boy exhaled loudly, releasing all his tension with the breath. An unfocused, half-baked idea had snuck into his mind. He wanted to go outside again. Gallows had taken him outside before, something which felt like too long ago, but that had been in the daytime. Jet wanted to see the moon. He wanted to see the stars as well. He didn't have any aid other that the aid he was prepared to give himself, but all gods and Guardians be damned, he _was_ going to do this.

_I gotta do this. It's my last chance…_

Jet slid out of bed and tried to stand. He felt a rush of vertigo and dizziness and his legs nearly buckled beneath him, but he clenched his hands into the wooden tool and forced himself upright, breathing hard. It hurt like a bitch, but he could feel a faint outline around both of his legs and feet, a gentle sensation of _almost-thereness_, probably premature phantom pains. His arms were already beginning to strain and ache from bearing nearly all his weight. There was no time to be hesitant. He had to step forwards now.

He slumped to the left, banging his shoulder hard on the side of the wall. He nearly slid downward reflexively, but willed himself forwards instead. Jet leant over until it looked like he was about to double over in pain, bravely slid the walking stave out to an angle that would catch him as he half fell, then shuffled his greatly-dead legs behind him, ending up in the same position he had started with, but finding himself a foot or so further away. He had taken one step.

This was quite possibly the hardest thing he had ever done before. Everything in his life, from his artificial birth to the final drifting journey he had undertaken had seemed like a cakewalk compared to this, the monsters of the past mere dust bunnies and dreams that had never been. All that existed now was the night, the floor and Jet, separated by one thin, ridiculously insignificant walking stick. How laughable. How stupid. How exhausting.

He was near tears when he came to the door and wedged it open with his body, giving up at this point and sliding down the length of the stave with a sigh, sitting within the frame of the door. A thought came unbidden to him as he pressed his face against the wooden pole between his legs and arms, that he probably looked like some kind of ludicrous and exhausted pole dancer. He could see outside from this vantage point, while still remaining technically inside. Jet wiped faint traces of sweat away from his brow, glad that that part was now over. He smiled.

The moon was a large, round, bone-white orb in the sky, bruised with traces of craters and shadows. It was a gem that nobody could attain, something that would remain unchanged until all life was taken from the land. If people feared time, as Jet did, then time would fear only the moon. The eternal moon.

Around it the stars sparkled like droplets of reflecting water, a sea of crushed, littler gems to complement the larger one that took up most of the sky. Jet leaned his head back against the doorframe and tried to breathe in the night, savoring it and the newest memory that he saw. Wisps of night fog were clinging to the grass like a creeping, animate burial shroud. Jet hoped that it wasn't seeking him out.

"It looks like a sea…" He whispered quietly to himself, hearing his voice emerge in a croak, sounding almost like the voice of a chronic chain smoker. A regretful expression crossed his face. It was a sea all right, one where the souls of all humans flowed with each other across the waves, each little droplet, like a star in the sky, creating a multitude that became a raging torrent of life.

_'What matters it how far we go?' his scaly friend replied…_

_'There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.'…_

There were other seas than this. Jet knew it. The youth turned away from the outside, picking up the walking stave with one hand and then hurling it out the door, way too far away for him to reach again. To Hell with it! He would not be able to stand again. Crossing that seemingly endless desert back to his bed was too impossible. He didn't want to do it again.

Jet pushed the door shut with a small grunt and ran his hand down to his chest again, for an amazingly strange moment almost feeling like he could trace the outline of his thudding heart from the pale skin of his chest. It wasn't long now.

"Virginia…" He whimpered, thinking on her again.

Whatever pride he thought he had left was now gone. It was a relief, like shedding a favored coat that had gotten too dirty to wear anymore. He was by himself now, the only one to bear witness to this last disgrace. Jet crawled back to his bedside, on his hands and knees, like a child. His cheeks were heated with pain and frustration and shame. He sat down beside Virginia, catching his breath. She looked like an immaculate maiden, immersed in blissful prayer. Prayer for his soul? He did not deserve such ministrations.

The last thing he wanted to do was wake her. Crying was becoming easier for him now that he was doing it more often, the last few bricks of his mental defenses coming down and being spirited away. He started to cry silently, knowing that he deserved to have died of bullet wounds years ago, a corpse that would have been buried away by a sandstorm, or become bleached bones by the sun. Instead, his death was affecting the ones he loved most of all. Yes, _loved_. Why couldn't he have said it earlier, when they were there around him and able to understand?

He was a fool. A goddamned fool.

Jet embraced her gently, attempting not to force her awake. He was trembling, shaking like a leaf against her warm, soft body, but he knew very well that Virginia slept like a rock most of the time, so everything would be okay. He started to sob into her shoulder. Words that had stuck in his throat from earlier slipped free like oil and quavering along with Jet's weak, frail body.

"I'm…It's time for me to go now, Virginia. I can tell. It's like an alarm is going off and there's nothing more I can do about it. But I'm such a stupid, fucking moron! I wanted to say everything to you, everything that I felt for you, but I couldn't. I wouldn't let me!" He tightened his hold on her, slightly. "I love you, Ginny. I love you." He kissed her cheek. "I love you." Her neck. "I love you." The line of her jaw. "I wish I could've said it earlier. An' not just you too, everybody else. Gallows and Clive and all the others. Everyone. I love… everyone…"

His hands moved up, following along hers to grip lightly in a small mimicry of her own, folded praying hands. From where he was, his arms weren't long enough for his fingers to meet together properly, but this was good enough. Jet's tears were making a small, translucent mark upon the white blouse Virginia had worn to bed, practically the only article of clothing she had on. "I can't pray." He admitted shyly. "I have nobody to pray to, other than God. And God won't answer me. But I _can_ pray that you'll know that I love you, an' that everyone else will know as well. I know I've been a bastard for a really long time, but I hope you'll know that if things were different, I would've stayed with you forever."

He unlaced Virginia's hands and kept a gentle hold on her right hand. As carefully as he could, he wrapped an arm about her shoulder and guided her softly to the blankets and sheets beneath her. The floor was uncomfortable to him and he was getting unbearably tired. The pain was rooting deeply into him as well, gnawing at his insides. He placed the hand that was holding Virginia's onto the floor. Jet kept a lax hold on her fingers and pressed all his body weight onto the very base of his palm and wrist, putting his other arm on the bed and swinging a leg up with whatever last dwindling sense of feeling and control that he had. He fought his way back onto the bed then drooped, landing harshly on his stomach.

Jet's faded lavender eyes could no longer see Virginia from where he was, but he knew she was still there. He was still holding onto her hand. The hand that had grasped at everything and had rightfully made her his leader. The hand he would have put a ring on someday, someday in the world of _never-land_.

The burning, erratic heartbeat in his chest had dwindled to a fluttering, half-hearted tremble.

_This is it. This is what it feels like to be dying._

It really wasn't as bad as he had thought. Numbness, something that had come without the aid of drugs spread from within him, touching his limbs in a series of pleasant waves. His eyes became distant, far away. He could see lights dancing behind them, flickering on a horizon of black sand and twilight.

"Ginny…" He uttered quietly, in a soft mewl. "…Don't forget me, okay? …I won't forget you…" Jet sighed, closing his eyes. "…love you…"

He fell into an untroubled sleep. Time passed by in the medicine house of Baskar Colony, clocked by the gentle rising and falling of Jet's breathing. Then, about twenty five minutes into his slumber, abruptly and without any commotion, his breath finally stopped. The tears were still fresh on his cheeks.

And Jet was gone.

xxx

Virginia had found him early the next morning. He had been lying on his stomach upon the bed, his head against the downy pillows. He had looked calm, unafraid. Jet had died in his sleep.

How strangely ironic it was for a youth to have lived every day of his life in the threat of constant danger, only to die in relative peace, in tranquil obscurity. Virginia hoped that there had been no pain in the end.

His body was cold, she felt it as she gradually greeted the waking world, her eyes sliding open and blurring against the pale morning light. Outside the sky was overcast, the ground dewy with water. It was the day in which the world would continue without him. They were lying parallel to one another, Jet upon the bed and Virginia upon the floor. They were joined by hand, _had been_ joined in that manner for most of the night. He had gripped her hand in fear and prayed that he would never have to let go again. He had still been holding onto her even as the life left his body. Rebellion to the bitter end.

The fingers were stiff and clinging, as she sat up and rubbed at her eyes with her one free hand, he would not let go. Gently she cupped his hand with both of hers, as if the action would bring warmth back into his body once more. Jenny's wooden prayer bracelet rattled against his wrist. The sense that Jet only _looked_ like he was sleeping was nearly overwhelming. He looked like a resting angel.

With one tiny, yet amazingly significant action, Virginia pulled him away from her, breaking the connection. There was no point now. "It's okay now, Jet." She said with a surprisingly calm voice, guessing that she must be entering the first stages of emotional shock. She actually felt somewhat relieved and wanted to cry for it. "I love you, and you won't have to worry about anything, not anymore."

Yes. Not anymore. He had been set free.


	14. The Eternal Wandering

Jet was buried far up in an isolated place amongst the northern mountains, a peaceful place that to a certain family in the Baskar tribe, was called _Serenitatis_. He would have liked it up there, in the absolute calm without a soul to disturb him in his slumber. It overlooked a great deal of the Midland area, places he would have visited and drifted a long time ago. Although Virginia and the others could not have been aware of it, Serenitatis was eerily similar to the Filgaia of Jet's deepest dreams, the Filgaia of an ancient age. He would have been happy there.

A small section was cut clean of the swaying grass stalks and Gallows had dutifully proceeded over the internment ceremony. He had made several mistakes over the ritual that day, but neither Shane nor Halle had had the heart to correct him. In a way that was probably what Jet would have wanted as well, good old stumbling Gallows would always be Gallows. Jet was buried respectfully in his drifting clothes, with his Airget-Lamh laid carefully in the crook of his gun-arm, in case he would ever need it again. His red and white scarf looked so pure and yet so bloody next to his sleeping, painless face, unknowing and unfeeling. If Jet wanted to continue his wandering, he had to do it as Jet the outlaw, not Jet the recently adopted Baskar.

But he was still wearing Jenny's wooden bracelet when he was placed into the earth, so it spoke of Jet's powerful need to live in the face of his own death, and the unspoken wish he had made to always continue growing and learning, while remaining himself. The bracelet was a tangible symbol of his short, precious memory. Jet's memories were returned to Filgaia, where they belonged.

There had been many tears on that day, as Virginia and Gallows, Clive, Shane, Halle and Jenny had said goodbye. The Maxwell Gang were invited to tread upon the sacred ground of Serenitatis whenever they wished to, as Jet had left Jenny's family a debt that they could never wholly repay. The three drifters knew that they would indeed return many times in the future, feeling like their fragile intimate circle of friends had been ripped open forever. There was still a long unknown time left for the wound to bleed. It was only when Jet was now gone that they realised just how deeply they missed him.

And so the drifting gang never strode very far from Midland for quite some time. Virginia visited Serenitatis often. When everything finally hit the six-month mark Virginia, now a quietly grieving twenty year old woman, came to a very abrupt and painful decision. She visited Jet in the very early morning, before both the sun and her teammates had risen. Herself and her small white mare were becoming very familiar with the areas within the northern mountains, the trip feeling like a pilgrimage road. She was probably the only one who came up here now, the sad and distressing news regarding Jet to the Baskar people fading away with the change in the seasons. But, no. She knew that Jenny still came here as well. If not for Jet, then for her ancestors.

In Serenitatis, everything was at peace. Everything stayed the same. Virginia knelt at Jet's grave that had not overgrown yet. It was neat and tidy, looking respectable. Long brown hair fell across her shoulders, beautiful and free, now that she no longer plaited it away. Leaning forward she read the words inscribed on the tombstone for another uncountable time. Clive had sweated and tortured himself over those words, what had to him sounded like the best thing to say. It must have been a hard job, because how could anybody sum up who Jet had been in just one phrase? In Clive's case, Virginia reckoned that he had done remarkably well.

**Jet Enduro  
1864 - 1875  
XI  
Drifter. Outlaw. Friend.**

_**"The truest measure of a life is not its length,  
but the fullness in which it is lived."**_

They were good words.

"Hello Jet. It's good to see you again." Virginia greeted levelly, with a small touch of tenderness, as if she was speaking to a small, sleeping child. She had meant to bring him something, some flowers maybe, but in the end it had slipped her mind. She had been too preoccupied with the sudden, frightening decision she had made. The drifter regretted it now. She wanted to give him something, perhaps as a peace offering. But Jet had never really said anything about liking flowers.

"Listen." Virginia said, speaking some of the hardest and truest words of her life. Even thought she didn't have a real audience, the words were difficult all the same. "Jet, I'm sorry, but I have to leave you here. We all try to be who we so desperately want to be, and my dream hasn't changed from back when you were alive. I want to keep on being a drifter with my friends for company, and you would know better than all of us that a drifter mustn't get tied down to a person or the land they rest in. Serenitatis is beautiful, but this place isn't for me. It belongs to you, and to Jenny's ancestors."

She smiled at the mention of the girl's name. There was news about _her_, too. "Do you remember that girl you saved? The one who made you that pretty wooden bracelet? Her coming of age ceremony was three months ago, and only last week I got the news that she is arranged to be wed. I guess her father must have found a suitable match for her right on time." Virginia giggled, letting her secret spill. "And do you know who it is? It's Shane! I think that Leo reckons if he never ends up becoming the Chieftain, it would be best for him to be connected to the one youth who would be perfect for the role. I'm happy for the both of them, Shane is a good man and he will treat Jenny kindly. Everything works out in the end, doesn't it?"

There was only silence to answer her. That was okay, however, because even when Jet had lived he had gotten his firmest points across through silences. It reminded her of him even more. "I wonder where you are now." Virginia pondered out loud, beginning to wipe the first traces of tears from her face. "Are you really resting here, right beneath my feet? Is death really just an eternal slumber? Or are you wandering now, a stranger in a far-off land, where mortal drifters like me can only dream to tread? You have to drift, Jet, and so do I, even if it is in opposite directions. The world is round, so even if we walk away from one another, I know we'll meet up again someday. I'm never going to forget you. You're a memory now, one of the fondest memories that can ever be."

Virginia felt a gentle breeze rush across the level mesa, causing the carpet of puffy grass stalks to ripple, like a calm wave upon the sea. "We all love you, and I love you most of all. Goodbye, Jet."

The sun was rising. Virginia knew that she had to get back to the others before they awoke and realised that she had been gone. It would not be a bad thing for them to know, but this was her private business, something that only she and Jet would know about. The thin line of orange rising sun thickened as it crept upwards, turning the grey-blue clouds in the sky a pleasant, tickled pink.

Visibility got better as the land around her lightened, greeting the day. Looking away, Virginia was about to stand up from her crouching position and wander back towards her grazing pony, when the flicker of something bright caught at the corner of her eye. She glanced back towards Jet's grave.

What she saw caused her heart inside her chest to flutter once, skipping a beat. She had not caught sight of it before because it had been dark enough to hide the colours, but small flowers were growing over Jet's grave, not bothered by the windy conditions of the mesa.

"Flowers…?"

No, it could not be. Had somebody left flowers at his grave? The brown-haired woman reached over and slid her hand beneath the petals of the flowers, tracing its thin, fragile stem to the earth below. They were real. They were there.

Two poppy flowers were growing in the earth of Jet's grave.

They were little but firm, huddled against one another like a couple seeking each others embrace.

One was white. The other, red.

"Jet…" Virginia whispered, believing that she had found her beloved's answer. The tears she had been holding back swept over her anew, forcing her to fall to the ground and cover her face with her hands, to hide her sobs. It was like a validation, the final footnote that spoke of the end. He was saying goodbye too, but at the same time, it made her feel strangely happy inside.

Because although Jet was wandering, she knew he was never very far away.

_-fin-_


End file.
